Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure as the member for Richmond-Wolfe and the official opposition's critic for regional development to speak on the occasion of the tabling of the budget.
I would ask permission to first remind this House of one of the major causes of the Canadian deficit, because the aim of this budget is to resolve the problem of the deficit in order to tackle the problem of the debt. Let us have a look at one of the causes of this great catastrophe of the Canadian economy-the debt.
Liberal Pierre Trudeau came to the position of Prime Minister armed with a national vision that was impervious to the many representations made with respect to provincial jurisdiction. This national delusion of grandeur on the part of one political party would take the country of the 1970s down the road to a national debt that is today out of control.
The Liberals' Canadian nationalism formed the ideological foundation for government intervention, given the lack of a real social democratic policy. National unity in the face of rising provincialism provided one vocation for the party and its leader; the other was Canada's independence from the United States. Thus involvement by the central government with the aim of ensuring a Canadian presence in all regions of this vast country gave birth to a monstrous government apparatus, the cost of which is being felt today in the national debt.
Canada's debt is the hidden side of this national liberalism. It is the expression of the collapse of the Liberals and of Canada's economic and political systems. Yes, Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada is responsible for the national debt.
Having said this, Canada's debt is now $550 billion, and will climb to $650 billion by 1997-98. The federal government's debt will continue to grow faster than the economy. The net debt will grow from $546 billion in 1994-95, to $578 billion in 1995-96 and will reach $603 billion in 1996-97. The debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, will peak at 73.5 per cent in 1995-96 before easing off slightly to 73.4 per cent in 1996-97.
Canada's problem is structural. It is directly linked to the Liberals' desire to centralize everything and to stake out an
imposing presence for itself throughout the country. Quebec should have dragged itself out of this quagmire a long time ago.
In the Minister of Finance's 1995-96 budget, the state takes a hands-off approach to this bankrupt country's economy. However, the federal Liberals still have the same desire, the same delusion of grandeur: they have stuck with the same flawed vision they had in the seventies, which was the dream of a unified nation taking its place among the greatest western capitalist countries.
In 1996-97, the government will cut $650 million in transfer payments to Quebec for health, education and welfare, but has no intention of withdrawing from these jurisdictions. The central government is beginning its great withdrawal by merging established programs financing with the Canada assistance plan to create one global transfer program, dubbed the Canada social transfer.
Despite budgetary constraints and the spectre of national bankruptcy hovering over our heads, Ottawa firmly clings to national standards. Abiding steadfastly to federal principles, that is the rampart the government is defending in the budget, with Quebec's referendum looming on the horizon. Make no mistake, this budget is, above all, about decentralizing the deficit accumulated by Liberals Trudeau, Chrétien, Lalonde and Turner, about decentralizing the Liberal debt, starting with cuts in federal transfer payments for post-secondary education, health care and social assistance.
The federal government has withdrawn from its funding role, but the departments where duplication exists remain in place. Did anyone say the Department of Health would be abolished? And when do we get this sweeping structural reform of the federal system? Despite the government's claims since the beginning of this year that it wants to decentralize, the Liberals are still flying the centralist flag. Thanks to national standards, the centralist option is alive and well.
A withdrawing from its funding role in the provinces does not mean the central government has withdrawn its administrative structures. Even if these become increasingly symbolic, they are still costly and, as such, even more damaging to the initiatives of the provinces. The trouble is, the federal withdrawal creates a vacuum. There is a lack of real job creation measures. People are upset about drastic cuts, and there is a consistent lack of regional development policies. For instance, general cuts in transfers to the provinces will have an impact on access to university. This is tough for our young people.
Certain regions may have trouble supporting their universities. This was said by Claude Lajeunesse, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. And he should know. The Eastern Townships, where I have the privilege of representing the riding of Richmond-Wolfe, is one of the regions that will be particularly affected by the federal government's new policy, the so-called Canadian Social Transfer, and the attendant cuts in transfer payments. This region, which has two universities and five hospitals, will suffer as a result of these cuts. Let the federal government withdraw, let it disappear and with it the departments of Health and Human Resources Development, let full responsibility be transferred to the regions, with the appropriate tax revenues.
Canada is the G-7 country that invests least in research and development, but the Minister of Finance cut the budget for research and development. In the agricultural sector in Quebec, $10 million will be cut annually over the next three years. This will have a particularly dramatic impact on the development of regions in Quebec that are known for their flourishing dairy industry. We see the same thing happening to the National Research Council of Canada, whose budget will be cut by $76 million over the next three years. Do not try to understand why. The Liberal Party which, throughout its election campaign and in its red book, focused on jobs, advanced technology and competitiveness, is now withdrawing from research and development in Quebec, making the regions poorer in the process.
Another example of a regional catastrophe. The Gaspé and the Maritimes will be particularly affected by the repeal of the Atlantic Region Freight Assistance Act, since $99 million worth of subsidies will be cut.
I would like to welcome my Liberal colleagues, who are coming from behind the curtains to listen to what I have to say.
The federal withdrawal announced in Monday's budget may be described as typical of a routed State, a government that has become so fat that it can no longer move except to reduce this government-made deficit on the backs of others: Quebec and the provinces. For example, Henri Massé, secretary general of the FTQ, reminds us that the total payroll for federal civil servants accounts for only eight per cent of the deficit and he concludes that this is a very cruel budget for the little people. It attacks the most disadvantaged segment of our society, namely the wage earners, while protecting the friends of the regime. The powerful capitalist leaders of the Liberal financial community in Canada are like the angels of the Liberal Party.
We, in the Bloc Quebecois, ask federal public service employees: "Do you not think that your jobs will be safer in a Quebec public service set to expand in a new sovereign country than in this declining federal public service?" Who says that laying off 45,000 employees will produce efficiency gains? What guarantee do we have that, as my hon. colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot said, the "bosses" across the way will not decide to replace the career civil servants who will be laid off with friends of the regime, friends of the Liberal Party?
Again, one of Quebec's regions will have to bear the brunt of indiscriminate federal cuts, as 12,000 federal jobs will no doubt be eliminated in the Outaouais region.
Going once more against what it had announced during the election campaign in terms of employment policies, the Liberal Party is about to cut the budget of its industry department by $560 million. This measure is all the more harmful because it affects peripheral regions.
With respect to the regions, while maintaining a presence, the Liberal government is planning to reduce the budget of regional development agencies by the modest sum of $0.6 billion over a three year period.
The Federal Office of Regional Development-Quebec, the FORDQ, becomes an empty shell that eventually will merge with the Federal Business Development Bank, as indicated in the budget, and play the role of a financial institution.
The implications of the budget are obvious: regional development agencies will channel their assistance to small business. Subsidies will be systematically replaced with refundable contributions and loans. Apparently, the Liberal Party of Canada thinks it can treat regional small businesses and big multinational corporations the same way, because when it cuts 60 per cent of its subsidies to business, it seems to think this should affect regional small businesses as well. And remember, they cut only 60 per cent, when everyone in the official opposition, including Quebec employers, wanted to cut them 100 per cent.
This approach will be very damaging to regional development in Quebec. That being the case, with the FORDQ an empty shell, the federal government should withdraw from regional development altogether, with full compensation for Quebec. The FORDQ is a typical example of duplication and overlap. Programs to help small businesses already exist in Quebec in all administrative regions, including a secretariat for small business at International Affairs.
Quebec cannot afford to remain in a system that maintains duplication and overlap. In any case, Quebec has generally had gained very little as a result of federal regional development policies, and the Minister of Finance's latest budget is a case in point. In fact, we are been advised by the minister that operating budgets of regional development agencies will be cut, and again, Quebec is being hit, this time to the tune of $40.3 million.
Monday's budget is typical of the Liberal philosophy of Canada's financial community. This budget does nothing to relieve the tax burden on the middle class, but maintains tax shelters for the very wealthy and large Canadian corporations. It continues to attack the neediest in this country. In 1995-96, social programs will see their budgets cut by 7.3 per cent; industrial, regional and scientific support programs, 1.8 per cent; heritage and cultural programs, 6.9 per cent; and Transport, 11.4 per cent. Meanwhile, debt charges are expected to increase by 20.7 per cent over the same period.
It is pretty obvious that Canada's financial community is not helping to pay the debt. The job market and the neediest in our society are bearing the brunt of these debt charges. The figures prove it: Over 27 per cent of the cuts to job creation and social programs will be used to pay the 20.7 per cent increase in the cost of servicing the debt.
The budget hits big business and corporations with a disproportionately small share of the deficit and debt fighting measures. Surtaxes on incomes of approximately $115 million were raised from 3 to 4 per cent, income tax rates for large corporations were raised slightly from 0.2 per cent to 0.225 per cent of capital used in excess of $10 million.
Let us not forget the banks. They do not get a permanent tax increase, but a temporary one. A minimal and insignificant tax. The Royal Bank of Canada, you will remember, pocketed $1.2 billion in profits last year. These are but a few examples of how the federal Liberal budget has spared the middle class, only to hit the big Canadian capitalists with mere micky-mouse tax measures, and thus passes by funds that are needed to reduce the deficit.
That is where the money is coming from to reduce the federal deficit. There is nothing in this budget for job creation, which is particularly dramatic for Quebec's regions. The Liberals even have the gall to say that the unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged over the next few years, at approximately 9.5 per cent, that is to say about 11 per cent for Quebec and its regions. The people of Quebec should know the time has come to say "yes" to a sovereign Quebec. It is more important than ever that our powers and decisions be in our own hands and not in the hands of others, like the federal Liberals.
Quebecers will pay dearly if they decide against having a country of their own, a real country that will take control over its public finances and operate the administrative changes required. Unless Quebecers vote for sovereignty this year, unless they choose budget efficiency and structural change, they are headed, as a society, for a situation where Quebec will have less and less control over job creation and will loose all ability to put in place an efficient regional economic recovery plan.
A negative vote at the upcoming referendum will signal the decline of regional development in Quebec, because the present Liberal federal government is showing its true colours in this budget with disastrous consequences for the regions. What the Federal Office of Regional Development, this capitalistic small business loan agency, will become is a parody of regional development. As the Bloc Quebecois critic for regional develop-
ment, I fully support the amendment put forth by my hon. colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot to defeat this budget.
In closing, what it this budget about? What does it mean? This is a pre-referendum budget that does not even let us see right away, in practical terms, that, once again, the federal government is hurting Quebec. The pain it getting pretty unbearable and this pain is like a wound, a wound that will not heal in this federal system. In order to heal, we have to decide for ourselves. Quebec has to choose its own remedies, so that it can be on its way to economic recovery.
It is up to the people of Quebec to choose a positive solution and find a cure to they own ills. To remain in this federal system is to leave our cultural and economic future, which is already seriously compromised, in the hands of individuals who look after and stand for interests other than those of ordinary people in Quebec. The unemployed, the disadvantaged, the ill, the aged, the young, these are the people for whom the federal system never does anything.
No! They work for the financial elite, the big corporations, the banks, the family trusts that will not be taxable until 1999, all close friends of this government, the majority of whom represent English Canada and the financial elite. That is what Canada has always been.
The people of Quebec must take responsibility for their own future, with confidence and openness. Confidence in themselves, in their resources, their strengths and capabilities; open to others as they always have been in their cultural and business relations with Canada, the United States, South America, Europe and the rest of the world.
Confidence and openness are Quebec's two greatest assets for the future. They are what it needs to recover from this incurable federal disease. The future of Quebec, if the people really want it, depends on pride. Pride in the fact that we decide to have a country, in the fact that we are all prepared to be responsible for our economy, our social programs and our culture, and pride in our own perception of the future, the future of generations to come, of our sons and daughters. We put our trust above all in our children, and we must do everything we can to prepare their future and ensure that our contribution in this respect is exceptional and worthy of the responsibility we have as their parents, as their elders.
History is in the making, and we should be proud to be a part of it and to make this exceptional contribution to our joint future. We say yes to this future, for the sake of our children first of all, and we want the people of Quebec to be a strong and vital force in a country that is Quebec.