Gaston Leroux

[Department Of Industry Act, December 7th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I think that the hon. member was more interested in making comments than in asking a question.

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. member himself said that this was a housekeeping bill. This piece of legislation sets out the directions given by the minister with regard to the power to take action. I referred to the bill, to the powers the minister gives himself by addressing regional development directly without going through the National Assembly, by allowing himself to negotiate and deal directly with Quebec structures, including municipalities which come under provincial jurisdiction.

The basic question in this case is clearly one of jurisdiction; the bill determines federal jurisdiction over regional development. The hon. member knows full well that according to all analyses of the federal government's regional development initiatives in Quebec, results are quite negative compared to all regional development.

When Quebecers talk about business, they mean small business. The hon. member knows full well that Quebec's strategic plans also include everything that goes with it, all the structures needed to finance small business. He knows very well that Minister Paillé's latest program is a vigorous small-business support program aimed at helping Quebec entrepreneurs start their own businesses and create jobs, since we know that small businesses do create jobs.

Although the hon. member is well aware of that, he tried to insinuate that we were all talk and no action-since it took him a long time to put his questions, allow me, Madam Speaker, to respond to all the matters he raised. In my opinion, he merely showed that Quebec's regional development program is currently ahead of anything that the Department of Industry may suggest in this area.

I want to add that when talking about this-as the hon. member pointed out-we should try to define the real needs instead of raising existential questions. Is the hon. member willing to admit that to do so, we must start by asking those involved to define their real needs? Regional county municipalities, regional development councils and a regional development secretariat were put in place to define the real problems and needs of the regions, instead of commissioning Price Waterhouse to conduct various studies here and there.

Local people are defining their own needs. They developed strategic plans, and I remind the hon. member that the government itself has just produced a series of reports evaluating Quebec's regions when Quebec issued such reports just last year. This duplication of regional analysis is a waste of energy and public funds.

Quebec is capable of developing itself.

[Department Of Industry Act, December 7th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I take part in this third reading debate on Bill C-46. Since my colleague for Saint-Henri-Westmount said that Quebec is a province, a region that cares more about existential issues than about job development, I rise to examine sections of this bill which provide precisely for job creation and development.

At this third reading stage, I would like to go into the details of the regional development concept. I want to base my speech on two distinct approaches, which are the key factors of the regional development problem in Quebec.

The dynamic policies of regional development in Canada are based on the concepts of growth and development. Both these concepts continually bring the central government in Ottawa into conflict with Quebec and its regions: it is the Quebec government versus the centralizing Canadian federation.

Let us ask ourselves what regional development is really about. First of all, let me remind the House that Canada is composed of four main regions: the West, Ontario and Quebec, in the heart of the country, and the Atlantic Provinces. Each of these four regions has its minister responsible for regional development. What should be examined is the impact the concepts of economic growth and development have.

In its 1989 report on social and demographic development, the social affairs council describes its approach as follows: "Growth is a quantitative measure of the increase in a society's wealth." That is how the increase in the gross domestic product per capita, for example, is presented. "Development implies a kind of growth that does not create inequality and is aimed at giving all individuals, wherever they live, the same opportunities for fulfilment." This is a major difference between the two concepts of growth and development.

In this perspective, regional development originates in each of Quebec's regions and is based on a dynamic of balanced economic growth among the regions. The member for Saint-Henri-Westmount knows Quebec very well. He knows that there are sixteen regions and that regional development means a balance among these regions. This notion of development versus growth underscores the federal government's approach with regard to regional development.

Indeed, given how all the federal government's regional development policies have evolued over the last 40 years, one can say objectively that the federal system has favoured growth as measured by economic output over development and the structural changes it involves.

The economic dimension, that is favouring a particular area or industrial region in order to stimulate Canada's gross domestic product, is clearly given priority over the structural dimension in most of what the federal government does in the regions. This approach, this federal involvement in regional development, will have an extremely detrimental effect in the long run on the development of our regions, in Quebec. That is the point I want to make.

I would like to start by reviewing a number of Quebec's demographic characteristics tied in with the economic problems faced by peripheral regions. Let us keep in mind that Quebec's share of Canada's population has been eroding steadily, down from 30 per cent at the beginning of the century to 25.8 per cent in 1986. The problem in Quebec is due mainly to the acceleration this trend. It took exactly 70 years from 1901 to 1971, for its share of the total population to decline two points but a mere 15, from 1971 to 1986, to drop two more.

In the regions, it has dramatic effects and the federal government's regional development policies are partly responsible. In Quebec, more communities are loosing population than growing. In Quebec, more regions are declining than growing.

Between 1971 and 1986, the number of young people in communities with declining populations fell by 43 per cent and that of adults by 9.5 per cent, while the number of seniors increased by 24 per cent.

Over the same period, in communities with growing populations, however, the number of young people remained more or less the same, while the adult population of childbearing age increased by 49 per cent. This means that when they leave their community, young adults take with them their reproductive potential, causing a further decrease in the birth rate.

The communities, mostly in peripheral regions, that experienced a substantial decline in population between 1971 and 1986 are also those with the highest rate of unemployment. Basically, a decline in population spells social problems.

In April 1994, for example, the rate of unemployment in the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands was 27 per cent; in the Lower St. Lawrence region, 17 per cent; in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, 15 per cent; in the Laurentians, 16 per cent; in Lanaudière, 16 per cent. An analysis of rural depopulation over a 15-year period shows that people are moving to major centres of economic growth with significant impact on Canada's Gross Domestic Product, which determines smaller communities and regional development in Quebec.

This is demonstrated by a historical overview of federal involvement in Quebec's regional development and the impact of these policies on Quebec's dynamics in this area.

In the 1960s, despite some valid initiatives, federal efforts as a whole lacked a global development strategy and co-ordination among the various departments involved. The departments operated sector by sector, each pursuing their own goals, without co-ordinating their actions regionally and correcting regional disparities. In the early 1990s, this attitude became a trademark of the federal government's regional development efforts in Quebec.

The Liberal government's current dismantling of VIA Rail networks in the regions shows that this Crown corporation did not receive the mandate to promote Quebec's regional development. There is only one criterion: profitability and economic growth and not regional development and people's well-being.

Such an attitude to regional development threaten the infrastructure of outlying areas, speeds up the depopulation of outlying municipalities and aggravates regional underdevelopment.

Let me give you another example: The disappearance of local post offices and of some local CBC TV stations shows the same disregard for regional development and the priority given by Ottawa to profitability and sectoral economic growth. There is a lack of global vision. They are busy saving the furniture while the house is burning down.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the need to co-ordinate the federal government's regional development initiatives in Quebec led to the creation of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion. The department focused its efforts on several economic growth centres, hoping that their development would extend to disadvantaged regions.

At the same time, the Higgins-Martin-Raynauld report commissioned by the department, on which the federal government's new regional development policies are based in part, concluded that Quebec's economic difficulties lie in the weakness of its only growth centre, Montreal.

The purpose of the study which led to this report was to define the main development objectives for the province of Quebec, simply from the perspective of territorial development. What this report has to say about the approach to development is important. It says that growth centres have an attractive force that drains human, financial and managerial resources from the outlying regions and that this process feeds on itself. The policy is to invest in the major centre and bring people, money and resources in from the outlying areas. Some kind of development! How can you be more centralizing?

Further on, the report says that no territory can become a development centre unless it was first a satellite-so it must have grown-and that being a satellite should have no pejorative connotation because it is the only way to strengthen a territory's competitiveness. That is the federal approach, philosophy and thesis for developing Quebec.

Further on, the report says in the same vein that much more important today are the innovations related to technological progress, concentrated in the relatively large and dynamic cities which are the centres of development. As far as this report is concerned, and it remains an important document in the evolution of federal policies and of the Liberal philosophy of regional development, even though the report is old, Quebec's economic future will be mainly determined by the competitive position of Montreal compared to the economic space dominated by Toronto and other regions dominated by big cities elsewhere in the world.

Unfortunately, the Government of Quebec is just as ignorant about some outlying communities and at times even denied their existence.

Influenced by the liberal line of thought which promotes megaprojects and seeks to build momentum for economic growth, sometimes by expanding large urban centres, the Quebec government decided, in the mid-sixties, to concentrate in regional centres the public services provided by various institutions, so as to reinforce the natural poles of economic attraction. At that time, a Liberal government was in office in Ottawa, while another Liberal government was controlling Quebec's destiny. The growth of Quebec cities over the last 15 to 20 years

would have been stronger without this concentration of public services in natural poles of economic attraction.

Unlike communities which did not provide such services and which experienced a decrease in population, the centres offering these services experienced a population increase. So, the development of some 16 Quebec regions, that is the structural planning of fringe areas, necessarily included the setting up of important services, as well as the development of a stable economic infrastructure adapted to the need of the community for a dynamic economic activity of its own, generated by local people instead of being subjected to the remote interests of a centralizing pole.

Again, the influence of this liberal and centralizing federalism is responsible for the delicate situation of most remote regions in Quebec, as well as for their demographic and socioeconomic underdevelopment.

The seventies saw the emergence of general development agreements between Canada and Quebec, the second generation of ERDAs which, incidentally, will expire a week from today, on December 14. However, these agreements all suffer from the same deficiency, that is the lack of a development policy based on eliminating the structural problems which impede regional growth. This problem is an inherent part of the federal regime, which helps maintain and even increase regional disparity, and which also jeopardizes the evolution and the survival of a whole nation.

The unilateral patriation of the Constitution in 1982 was, to a degree, a form of federal interference in regional development.

This was undemocratic, since Quebec has yet to endorse the Constitutional Act of 1982. It was a show of force against Quebec, by the federal Liberals and their friends from the other Canadian provinces, to increase, among other things, the federal spending power in Quebec, so as to control its regional economic development. In the eighties, Ottawa increased its interference in regional development matters, thus showing more clearly than ever its enormous potential for developing parallel structures and for generating duplication, which costs Canadians and Quebecers dearly, and which also accounts for their indebtedness.

This disastrous federal policy on regional development in Quebec continues to apply. The Department of Regional Economic Expansion was replaced by the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. They are very good at inventing new structures and duplicating what has already been done. DRIE was to focus industrial policy on economic growth strategies. Unfortunately, and this was to be expected, the department was dominated by sectoral concerns, so that industrial development got more money than regional development.

Today, legislation to establish the Department of Industry is about to be adopted. We are now on third reading. Bill C-46 provides that the Department of Industry has the power to "initiate, recommend, co-ordinate, direct, promote and implement programs and projects in relation to regional economic development in Quebec". In other words, the department will go on investing and having an impact on regional development in Quebec, but its activities will not be part of a comprehensive approach to deal with the structural problems of the regions.

The federal government should withdraw from regional development in Quebec, since it tends to ignore the process for the development of regional structures, initiated by Quebec and its regions through its regional county municipalities, its regional development secretariat and its regional economic development councils. As a result, the federal government has a negative impact on regional development in Quebec and on the general development of Quebec's potential.

In Bill C-46, the federal Liberal government has irresponsibly ignored Quebec's clear-cut and traditional claim to sole jurisdiction over regional development. Furthermore, with its total lack of concern about duplication and overlap, the federal Liberal Party helps waste public funds, and it has done so by creating and putting in place structures that Quebec has already had for more than 20 years.

The approach taken by the federal Liberal government, with its two-fold obsession with developing the industrial centres of Quebec's metropolitan areas while ignoring the rest of the province, and with spreading the federal centralist gospel right and left, without a co-ordinating policy, has not only proved to be disastrous for the development of the regions but in many cases has been an obstacle to Quebec's attempts to decentralize socio-economic responsibilities to the regions.

As a distinct society, Quebec has a creative and innovative potential for regional development that, in terms of its perspective and emphasis on long-term solutions, goes well beyond anything the federal government has been able to do in the West, Ontario, Quebec or the Maritimes with its regional development policies.

In response to invasive federal policies and intent on saving Quebec society from regional underdevelopment and eventual cultural assimilation, since the two go together, in 1979 Quebec passed the Act respecting land use planning and development, Bill 125, and created regional county municipalities. These regional centres were to become a vehicle for involvement at the grass roots level.

In Quebec, decentralization of decision-making powers, together with a planning approach that differed substantially from

the federal government's growth policies, were subsequently seen as essential components of a regional policy for the year 2000.

At the same time, in an unprecedented spirit of planning and development, the Government of Quebec divided its territory into 16 administrative regions. These are strategically important to Quebec. They are based on geographic, economic, industrial and cultural components in which we find the only real actors responsible for Quebec's development. And this is something that the federal government cannot and does not want to understand, because acceptance of the principle of decentralization is fundamentally at odds with the federal Liberals' idea of centralization that has come straight from Trudeau.

Regional county municipalities, or RCMs, are groupings of municipalities with a combination of economic, cultural and social activities reflecting their proximity, and the movement of people to the places where they work and live. Administrative regions have called upon these RCMs to define development thrusts setting forth the whole range of problems being experienced by these regions with respect to employment, and social, educational and cultural development.

These diagnoses were used to develop a strategic plan for each RCM. The government in power must listen to and recognize the work already accomplished through the expenditure of public money, and the investment of resources and skills.

Take the example of the Eastern Townships, a region that includes seven RCMs. These local bodies analysed and pooled their strategic development plans, and then gave priority to the major development thrusts and development projects, in line with the regional decentralization policy of the Quebec government.

These priorities, which are determined by the particular environment, reveal areas where correction is required, where development is indicated. Thus, by promoting the development of human resources, training and manpower, research, technological development and the linkage of businesses, the decisions made locally have an influence on the economic development of the whole country.

We have to go back to the real make-up of the country, beyond the administrative regions, and focus on the sub-regions and the local communities, assess successes and failures and rethink development. That is what the Parti Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois have being working on in their joint plan for a sovereign Quebec. Regional economic development must be coupled with a social development policy to provide every citizen with an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential in a healthy and challenging environment, wherever they live in this huge area. A growing majority of Quebec players, we hope, will be able to pull along in their wake all of Quebec, and Quebec society, through its regional players, fully supports the decentralization proposal put forward by the new Quebec government.

So, at the third reading stage of Bill C-46, the Bloc Quebecois, the Official Opposition, objects to the domination exercised by the Department of Industry and the powers assigned to the minister, relating to regional development in Quebec. We definitely denounce the new powers and duties of the Minister of Industry to formulate and implement policies, plans and integrated federal approaches in Quebec, as stated in Clause 9( a ) of the bill.

We also denounce the power to lead and co-ordinate the activities of the government of Canada in establishing co-operative relationships between various agencies of the government of Canada and Quebec. The government has the gall to have the legislation provide that the minister may deal directly with certain bodies in Quebec, going over the head of the Quebec government and National Assembly, and going as far as identifying municipal bodies, which come under provincial jurisdiction. Incredible!

This bill shows how stupid and wasteful it is to want to interfere like that, further compounding duplication and overlap.

Essentially, Bill C-46 reflects the federal government's resolve to take over regional development in Quebec and set it in a Canadian perspective of economic growth and efforts to bring the federal deficit down, a perspective that greatly hinders the enfranchisement and development of the people of Quebec.

The only option acceptable to us is the structural development of our regions through the decentralization program developed by the new government of Quebec. It is therefore by leaving the current federal system that we will achieve our goal as a society, a society destined to really develop structurally, all over its territory, and one looking towards the next century and open to the world.

The Official Opposition's position on this bill is no to the federal government and yes to Quebec.

[Job Creation And Economic Growth, December 5th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I would like to react today to the tabling of the industry minister's policy statement for his department.

Although this document has some good points, as we admit, we can only see it as a political document that seeks to make up for a non-existent substantive industrial policy; we were entitled to expect a substantive policy, given the state of the Canadian economy.

The statement refers to a plan of action for some thirty programs involving co-operation among ten or so departments. We already know that for some aspects of the announced action plan, some ministers will work together and we will only see the results in 1998, according to information we obtained for parts of the document. Some plans will only take effect in 1995, if then, according to conversations I had with people in the department.

We therefore think that this paper is premature, since the proposed new policies depend on other departments' policies which are not yet known or will come, very late, from consultations that are still incomplete and program reviews that are a long time coming.

We know very well that several key documents on social programs have not yet been tabled. How can the minister boast that his policy takes into consideration all that businesses need to achieve the desired growth? For example, the action to be taken by the Department of Public Works will not be known until 1995.

The minister wants to promote growth for small businesses by opening up government procurement and allowing companies to have access to what is available in terms of such procurement. However, we have no idea of where this will come from, nor when the action plan will be completed.

In the context of that growth, how will this access to government procurement for small businesses work? Will companies be allowed to register in some file? Will there be calls for tenders for professional or technical services? How will this plan work? We do not know. For companies, growth does not mean the same as development. Indeed, the growth of some companies does not necessarily promote economic development for a territory or a region.

Given these unknowns, we find it hard to understand why the minister is so quick to extol the virtues of his action plan and say that it meets an urgent need in the economy, and particularly a desire to develop small businesses, which will generate employment as everybody agrees.

The strategy for technological innovation is another example of the government's lack of global vision. Indeed, the minister is considering a technological innovation policy without knowing the results of the current consultations on research and development, which will only be completed in 1995.

The minister talks about consulting with partners. However, when you think of the information highway issue raised by Quebec, it is very hard to see the minister showing leadership, since his government is totally opposed to any dialogue on this issue.

How can the minister justify the existence of a true technological innovation policy while putting on the back burner the whole issue of research and development? By definition, innovation implies the search for new products and processes, so that companies are competitive in the international market. Otherwise, we obviously cannot talk about competitive businesses.

In his action plan, the minister proposes three strategic priorities: Support for small businesses, infrastructure and technology. As far as support for small business is concerned, the minister reluctantly proposes to maintain funding support through the Small Businesses Loans Act program. I say reluctantly since it is only because this program is mentioned in the red book that the minister has decided to maintain it, although without implementing the red book promise to get rid of personal collateral.

The minister is announcing that available funds will be increased to $12 billion because this program gets results. In itself, this is good news.

This program is so popular that businesses register quickly. Small businesses are a well-known fact; they are dynamic, eager to innovate and expand. On the other hand, the minister is announcing that the program will have to be self-financing. This is what the government is seeking, to go and get back the money it loaned. I believe that to be its fundamental goal. In itself, it is laudable.

But if we compare that to what the Minister of Human Resources Development is suggesting when he says that access to credit will be made easier for students, we quickly understand the equation. To save public funds, the government is forcing individuals into debt. What is the impact of this on SMEs? Are they going to be pushed deeper into debt or will they really get help to start up or develop domestically or internationally?

Thus, without even conducting a cost-benefit analysis, which could have shown the efficiency of the program and indicated which policy was preferable with respect to tariffs, the minister is acting, in our view, as an amateur, increasing, without any consultation, the cost of financing SMEs. We can draw a parallel with the social reform whereby the government says that it will cut support to students, but they will be given the chance to go deeper into debt while the government sets up mechanisms to recover the loans it guaranteed.

I wonder whether this is a responsible way to behave for the government and especially the industry minister, in the present economic context. Although some people on the government side sometimes think we are the bad guys, I must congratulate the minister on announcing measures to reduce red tape.

Everybody is complaining and rightly so. Everybody agrees, every time you want to do something you have to fill out 16 different forms and send them all over. Therefore this is a good move by the government. Reducing red tape is something SMEs have been asking for for a long time in order to stop wasting time and resources. Imagine having to submit 119 pages of information to get $10,000. Finally we are giving SMEs what they have been asking for.

However, I would like to point out to the minister that we are here to promote a sovereign Quebec and I mentioned the information highway where the message to the minister was to open up to negotiation and co-operation. The minister did not open up, so I remind him that under our option, a level of government-the federal level-will disappear, thereby reducing red tape, inefficiencies and regulations often at cross purposes, making our industry much more efficient. This is a clear goal.

The government is continuously reminding us that we must create the atmosphere for growth in the high-technology sector. We agree. SMEs in that area represent the future of our industrial base. True, high-tech SMEs are creating the jobs of tomorrow and will be mainly responsible for our ability to maintain the high standard of living we need and must have.

It is therefore regrettable that the government would not propose any policy to stimulate their growth and, in particular, improve their financing. We must realize that these companies pursue speculative endeavours and have specific financing problems. Banks are seldom willing to finance technology and this brings me back to the role of government. It says it wants to recover its money, and it acts like a banker. We know what a bank does, it loans money when it is reasonably certain that it is secure. Precisely what the government is doing.

Yet, there are technological areas where risk is high. It is impossible to act like a banker in the sense that we cannot expect all the guarantees that a bank would normally require. That is obvious.

If we really want to encourage the development of these businesses, we must provide ways to find more appropriate funding for them. In our dissenting opinion to the report of the industry committee we proposed extending the Small Businesses Loans Act in order to fund the working capital of all businesses. This would have made it possible to support the financing of small and medium size high-tech enterprises. Instead, this government proposes a piecemeal strategy with a program that would only provide exclusively for the financing of exporting SMEs.

Even the Canadian Association of Exporters recommended to the industry committee-and I do not know if the minister has heard about it-that the working capital of exporting SMEs be financed under the act. The government does not listen to the people involved.

As for infrastructure, the minister praises the transport minister's policy. We have seen what has been going on in that area up to now and we are not at all heartened. If this is an indication of what this government intends to do about transportation, we should expect the worst.

We believe that the national policy on airports, among others, is nothing but a disguised way to pass on the cost of regional transportation to municipal and provincial governments. This process had begun under the previous government and we already see costs being passed on to other levels of government.

Furthermore, the federal government has the nerve-and this is important because they did it in several departments-to keep the revenue from the national network of airports and use it to finance regional airport infrastructure while disavowing any responsibility for their operating costs. This is how the federal government wants to manage public property and public funds throughout Canada.

This is what federalism is all about. This is it. The federal government keeps the power even though it cuts funds and totally withdraws from the administration of services. As we were told, it does not have any choice, it is debt-ridden. It will have no choice but to turn to the provinces for help, and will be

unable to return the favour. The facts are really very simple. Everyone understands the situation.

The Minister of Transport is following a policy which jeopardizes some regional transportation facilities and will greatly increase the cost of transportation from region to region.

The information highway is the best example of the total lack of consultation and co-operation between the federal government and the provinces. As I said earlier, the minister is about to ask the CRTC to significantly change the regulations concerning telecommunications in order to facilitate the creation of this information highway, without even consulting the provinces. The information highway will have a major impact, as you know, on a great many areas, some under exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

In committee, we were very surprised to learn that the minister is going ahead with the information highway. But who will control the information to be found on this highway? Who will provide the information? One thing became clear in our discussions with officials from the Department of Industry, nobody has the answer to these questions. This issue has not been examined yet. It will be in the months to come. We are about to go ahead with the information highway without even making sure that its contents will be controlled and that there will be joint action with the provinces, which obviously have jurisdiction in this area.

Finally, I would like to address the issues of technology andR & D. The document tells us that Canada's effort in R & D is less than that of other G-7 countries. However, the Canadian government invests as much as its competitors in civilian R & D. This demonstrates how badly administered and inefficient the government's R & D effort is.

It is about time we thoroughly reviewed our involvment inR & D matters and adopted a true science policy for R & D. The government must be ready to question everything, to decentralize our technological efforts and to base our research laboratories outside Ottawa to take advantage of the scientific resources that are found across the country and make better use of them. This may create some synergy with the scientific research capabilities throughout Canada.

To conclude, the document tabled by the minister is nothing but an incomplete policy statement, which contains many policies already announced by his colleagues and others that will be announced by 1998. Thus, to be able to put Canada and Quebec back on the prosperity track, we have to consider-

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 10

That Bill C-46, in new Clause 21, be amended by replacing subclause 2 with the following:

"(2) The Minister shall, at least 60 days before the date on which the Minister fixes or increases a fee under sections 18, 19 or 20, cause to be published in the Canada Gazette and in no fewer than two leading newspapers in each province a notice clearly indicating a ) the products, services, rights, privileges, regulatory processes, approvals or use of facilities provided under these sections; and b ) the fees to be fixed or increased pursuant to these sections.''

Madam Speaker, the Official Opposition has a pretty straightforward position on clause 21(2). Our amendment is aimed at putting things right side up instead of upside down.

This clause of Bill C-46 found in the third report of the industry committee says in part (2) that, after setting fees under sections 18, 19 or 20, the minister has 30 days to publish these fees in the Canada Gazette so that Treasury Board can pass regulations to authorize them.

People are notified 30 days after the fees have been set. This is totally unacceptable. This is a devious way to increase taxes without notifying taxpayers or notifying them after the fact. Something is wrong here.

We also detect an attempt to give disproportionate powers to senior officials, since this clause enables them to set fees without the approval of the House of Commons. They will simply bypass those elected by their fellow citizens to manage the affairs of state.

This provision of the bill is clearly undemocratic, in our opinion, since fees can be set without the approval of lawmakers. The doors are wide open. That is why the Bloc Quebecois tabled this motion:

(2) The Minister shall, at least 60 days before the date on which the Minister fixes or increases a fee under sections 18, 19 or 20, cause to be published in the Canada Gazette-

Not 30 days after but 60 days before, so that we can respond and look into the matter.

Let us be serious. I am telling the Liberal government to stop using devious means to increase taxes and make all Canadians poorer.

The Bloc Quebecois is simply asking the federal government to stop managing the Quebec economy, either through fee-setting policies or regional development. That is why we oppose this amendment.

[English]

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am a little surprised to hear what the hon. member from the Reform Party had to say immediately after the speech the hon. member for Fraser Valley West had given, emphasizing that the government was to step in only when necessary. He was in fact leaving the door open to some government involvement, while in the amendment and the remarks made by the hon. member for the Reform Party who spoke just before me, the door is totally closed.

Deleting, in Clause 14, lines 19 to 47, on page 7, and lines 1 to 8, on page 8, is absolutely unthinkable, as far as we are concerned. Let me explain. Again, this Reform Party proposal shows that this party is totally out of touch with economic reality. It cannot conceive the role of the State as that of an economic leader, a developer. It sees it more as a wait-and-see role, if not that of a killjoy.

By deleting large portions of Clause 14 which enables the government, through its Minister of Industry, to influence small and medium size businesses to facilitate the implementation of programs or projects under the act, the Reform Party shows, once again, its commitment to fostering wild liberalism: "Let us go. We will see where it leads us".

The Bloc Quebecois can only condemn such an attitude, an attitude of permissiveness with respect to the market economy. You cannot just say: "Go at it, any which way you want". I think that the State has a role to play as an economic leader, and a

promoter of development. I think that is part of the responsibilities of the State.

Therefore, we think it is essential that the government be able to have a say concerning loans that may be made, guarantees that may be given and loan insurance or credit insurance that may be provided, as stated in paragraph 14(3)(a).

Unlike the Reform Party, we feel it is also essential that the government be able to make loans and guarantee the repayment of any financial obligation or provide loan insurance ir credit insurance and make grants and contributions.

The Premier of Quebec made it clear -he sent clear signals- when he said that the State must be an active player in the economy. It must not assume the role of a banker, but its certainly can guarantee repayment for SMEs, which are recognized as creating the most new jobs, to promote their development and help them face this free trade, global market, high-tech, competitive context. In a nutshell, support the development of businesses. The primary role of the state is to be an economic leader and developer.

Quebec, as we know it today, is the product of the emergence of a state actively involved in the economic development of its territory since the beginning of the 1960s. Take for example the great success of Hydro-Québec, the major role played by the Quebec deposit and investment fund and, more recently, the success of the Solidarity Fund, which go to show that the economy of the community has to be made available to small and medium size businesses, indeed, the ones that generate the most employment.

Minister Paillé has just implemented a program for SMEs, to guarantee repayment to a maximum of $50,000 for SMEs, people who have ideas, who can implement ideas, create jobs and develop them.

That is what we call economic support. Action must be taken to support the people who are very active in terms of development and job creation. There are many out there who have ideas and can set up businesses.

The Bloc Quebecois can only express disagreement with this presentation and the Reform Party amendment. Because we recognize that any State has a role to play as a developer and must support economic development, particularly as regards SMEs, we are clearly opposed to the amendment brought forth by the Reform Party.

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure to speak to Bill C-46 on behalf of the Official Opposition, as its critic on regional development.

There are at least two major elements at stake in this bill to establish the Department of Industry. The first one concerns jurisdiction over regional development, while the second one has to do with whether or not duplication will be perpetuated in government management.

At report stage of Bill C-46, an Act to establish the Department of Industry, the Bloc Quebecois proposes that clauses 8, 9 and 10 be amended by inserting, at line 21 in clause 8, line 21 in clause 9, and line 36 in clause 10, the following: "With the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council of Quebec when it is a field related to regional development in Quebec -"

What does that mean? It means that the federal government does not have jurisdiction over regional development in Quebec and that the province is the only one with the authority to define policies and set up structures in that field.

The constitutional coup against Quebec represented by the Constitutional Act dated November 5, 1981, to which Quebec never subscribed in spite of the fact that it represents one quarter of the Canadian population, allowed the federal government, by claiming it had jurisdiction regarding regional disparity, to give

itself unlimited spending power and therefore also give itself every power concerning regional development.

The 1982 unilateral patriation of the Constitution is federal interference in Quebec's regional development since, as you all know, regional economic development is not a jurisdiction included in the 1867 Constitution.

Bill C-46 is a logical follow-up to the Constitutional deal which was struck in November 1981. It is part of the plan of the Liberal Party of Canada to isolate Quebec, to direct the economic development of Quebecers and to deny their distinct identity by making Quebec's development contingent on federal regional development policies.

In Bill C-46, the government has irresponsibly chosen to ignore Quebec's regional development policies and structures. Unconcerned about duplication, although the party in power, the Liberal Party, admits duplication exists because it wants to eliminate duplication and overlap, in this case they have made it abundantly clear that they want to preserve this duplication by refusing to recognize Quebec's sole responsibility for regional development. They prefer to ignore existing duplication and overlap just as they prefer to ignore the wasteful spending of public funds. The Minister of Industry and his Liberal colleagues want to increase their interventions in Quebec through this bill.

In section 9(1) (a) and (b) it says that the Minister of Industry, and I quote:

-with respect to regional economic development in Quebec, (a) in co-operation with other concerned ministers and boards and agencies of the Government of Canada, formulate and implement policies, plans and integrated federal approaches; (b) co-ordinate the policies and programs of the Government of Canada;

I think we can clearly interpret this as a full scale invasion of regional development in Quebec and a federal takeover of development and policies in this area.

However, the government party must realize that for decades, Quebec has had regional development programs that were far more effective than federal intervention has ever been in this area.

The federal Liberal government, with its two-fold obsession with developing the industrial centres of Quebec's metropolitan areas while ignoring the rest of the province, and with spreading the federal, centralist gospel right and left, without any policies for co-ordinating the interests of those concerned, has often acted in ways that have proved disastrous for Quebec's peripheral regions.

Madam Speaker, in this House I had an opportunity to refer to an impact study of federal regional intervention policies in Quebec, policies that, because of this intervention focussed on large urban centres, have had a devastating effect in the regions, since we now see that peripheral regions throughout Quebec have lost their young people and experienced a decline in population.

In its second report, the Conseil des affaires sociales du Québec pointed out that the situation was disastrous in all Quebec's peripheral regions. The number of municipalities and peripheral regions where the population has declined increased to an alarming extent between 1971 and 1988, when federal intervention in regional development was at its peak-in other words, the better part of the period when the Liberals were in power in Ottawa-so that today, they outnumber communities experiencing population increases. Young people are the first to leave their regions for the big urban centres.

That is the result of the federal regional development policy. In the Gaspé, the Magdalen Islands and other rural areas of Quebec, solidarity movements have sprung up to restore hope to local communities and begin work on comprehensive, integrated development. They include, among others, Coalition urgence rurale, Ralliement des Gaspésiens et des Madelinots and Rural Solidarity. The numbers and types of development partnerships are increasing.

Businesses, unions, local authorities, and the co-operative movement no longer hesitate to take charge of their own development. These players have sought, when appearing before forums such as the Bélanger-Campeau Commission, to promote the idea that, for instance, control of economic development levers must rest with Quebec and that decision-making powers must be decentralized, and to obtain a consensus in this regard. The major consensus that has emerged fits in with regional development in Quebec, and there is growing consensus that the federal government should be told clearly to withdraw from regional development, an area in which it does not belong.

As I have already mentioned, regional development is not a separate area of responsibility in the Canadian Constitution, thus forcing Quebec to take part in unending and fruitless negotiations such as those involving the regional economic development agreements. Bill C-46 confirms the federal government's determination to take over regional development in Quebec.

It also points up the stupidity and waste of such an insistence on interfering, which leads to still more duplication and overlap. Let me give an example. Under section 9(1)(b), the Minister of Industry, through the responsible minister in the Federal Office of Regional Development-Quebec, shall collect, compile, analyse, coordinate and disseminate information with respect to regional economic development in Quebec, thus enabling the federal agency to undertake a series of studies and analyses with the purpose of defining socio-economic profiles for each region of Quebec.

Studies released by the FORDQ in November, a few weeks ago, studies that were a total waste of time and which were conducted on a region-by-region basis in Quebec, are examples of a monumental waste of money and energy, because it so happens that Quebec has produced its own studies and analyses on each region of the province this past year, in preparation for regional strategic development plans. I have perused the studies released by the office and noticed that the Federal Office of Regional Development-Quebec had wasted money, using the same statistics and reaching the same conclusions, region by region.

Since such studies cost money, this confirms that this government is ignoring what Quebec does in that area and spends money needlessly on duplicating studies that have already been done. To conclude, the federal government must withdraw from regional development and recognize that Quebec only has jurisdiction over economic development on its territory. That is what our amendment, the Official Opposition amendment, is about.

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-46, in Clause 10, be amended by replacing line 36, on page 5, with the following:

"10. With the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council of Quebec where the powers, duties and functions assigned by subsection 4(2) relate to regional development in Quebec, the Governor in Council may make".

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-46, in Clause 9, be amended by replacing line 5, on page 5, with the following:

"Ontario and Quebec, and with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council of Quebec where such powers, duties and functions relate to regional development in Quebec,".

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-46, in Clause 9, be amended by replacing line 22, on page 5, with the following:

"ing the same duties and functions, and with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council of Quebec where such powers, duties and functions relate to regional development in Quebec, the Minis-".

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-46, in Clause 8, be amended by replacing line 23, on page 4, with the following:

"by subsection 4(2), with the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council of Quebec where such powers, duties and functions relate to regional development in Quebec, in a manner that will".

[Department Of Industry Act, December 1st, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-46, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 13, on page 2, with the following:

"(h) patents, trade-marks, indus-".