Gaston Leroux

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I explain these things because they are reluctant to see them. They are upset by my comments. Regional development is a responsibility of the Minister of Industry and, by order in council, the minister himself is responsible for a region. The Minister of Human Resources Development is responsible for the West. The Minister of Supply and Services is responsible for the East, while the Minister of Finance is responsible for Quebec.

If this is not about regional development, what is it? This is about helping small and medium-sized businesses; it is about development and access to credit for those businesses. These aspects are all relevant. The government simply does not want to face the issue squarely and with a structured approach.

It is because it does not look at the basic question in a structured fashion that duplication and all these structures are maintained, with the result that the ultimate objective-

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine does not know his region at all, since what he is demanding is, in fact, a settlement. I urge him to tell me if the Eastern Plan has indeed been renewed. They have been fussing with this plan for several months. Of course, the government did not see fit to respond to the first invitation last summer. It then kept putting off the meeting with Eastern producers. The last I heard, nothing has been settled regarding the Eastern Plan. The agreement has not even been renewed at this time.

In any case, for a member coming from Quebec and very familiar with regional tools like regional development councils, industrial associations, the general secretariat of foreign affairs, which make loans to businesses and work on domestic and international market development and prospecting with them- he knows full well that there is increasing co-operation in integrating structures, precisely because they decided that there were too many structures and players.

The underlying reason why the regions decided to analyze their economic development strengths and weaknesses was to come up with strategic development plans to be shared through an integrated forum called the regional economic development council. The purpose of this was to reduce the number of steps required, to make business and socio-economic development more efficient, to avoid overlap-within their own territory, to say nothing of federal involvement-to rationalize their own actions and structures.

The hon. member should know that these integration efforts will soon be stepped up in his own region. We do not need to create anew, as with the 13 FORD-Q information offices. Quebec already has integrated offices providing information, including export information, to small businesses and all stakeholders.

The Minister of Regional Development in Hull specifically said that this program would be helpful to small exporters. Quebec already has a recognized and appreciated organization which supports small exporters and gives them a complete kit on how to develop their own markets and foreign business plans.

That is duplication. People in Quebec, to convey to the federal government that if its goal is indeed to maximize the funds invested and provide real and effective support to small businesses, are sending the following message.

Why does the government not admit that the experience of the past 40 years in regional development-again, the development of all regions and not major centres-Forty-seven per cent of the amounts under recent agreements were invested in central regions. Why not admit that Quebec is the primary force in regional development and that its experience-and that of all its people-is concentrated at the regional development level, as the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine should know? Who are the people working together at the regional development level? The same people he mentioned earlier: regional county municipality officials, mayors, socio-economic businesses, entrepreneurs, unions. This full integration of economic development players only makes them more efficient while reducing the number of action structures.

What is being proposed here? To create other action structures without integrating into existing structures. We cannot accept in good faith-

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as we resume this debate, I would like to recap briefly what was said in the first part, which is extremely important and deals with the impact of regional development, and federal involvement in regional development in particular. Let me remind this House, first of all, that, between 1974 and 1984, both sets of economic and regional development agreements commonly called ERDAs have had an extremely negative impact on peripheral regions, that is to say regions outside of major centers that monopolized 46 per cent of the total budget in terms of investments.

I would like to push on a little further with this demonstration, my ultimate goal being to bring the federal government to understand that it must withdraw completely from regional development in Quebec and recognize the province as prime mover with respect to development. To continue with my demonstration, by integrating the regional offices known as FORD-Q with the Department of Industry and turning them into business service centres, the Liberal government is creating a single window for information on federal, provincial and municipal programs and services in Quebec, the sole purpose of

which, in our view, is to emphasize Canadian regional development policies with the catastrophic results that we know, results noted in several studies.

So, as a member of the industry committee, it is my duty to denounce this contempt displayed by the federal government for Quebec's regional development policies. Quebec, the State of Quebec, has had a regional development process for over 40 years, across that is far more effective and better adapted to the needs of fringe regions.

I repeat that today, we have a series of general agreements involving 95 regional municipalities that have done their own strategic development studies in terms of the development of SMEs and industry. These general agreements reflect how important it is to be close to the fringe areas, as opposed to following federal imperatives based on a mythical vision of what industrial development ought to be in Canada.

Speaking as a member of Industry Committee, I support the dissenting opinion of my Bloc colleagues, which includes recommendation No. 20. I support the dissenting opinion, including recommendation No. 20 of this committee which is intended to enable the federal government to interfere with the definition of the objectives and portfolio structure of the assets of the QFL Solidarity Fund. It is entirely unacceptable that the committee should recommend that the federal government interfere with the definition of the objectives and orientation of labour-sponsored venture capital corporations established under provincial legislation.

More about duplication and overlap. The new mission of the Federal Office of Regional Development, which has now been merged with the Department of Industry, is to all intents and purposes that of a service centre for business.

However, this is what the Department of Industry has to say about the purpose of the FORD: Taking into account its limited financial resources, it plays a major role by offering SMEs services including information, analyses and strategic assistance. In Quebec we already have the wherewithal to provide such services to SMEs, including exporter SMEs, through the General Secretariat for Foreign Affairs of Quebec, which provides entrepreneurs with information and a very detailed guide that has an excellent reputation among entrepreneurs active on international markets.

In fact, legislation passed in Quebec in 1979, the Act respecting land use planning and development, which created regional municipalities, the so-called MRCs, provided the structure for such services. With a council in each of the 95 MRCs, economic development corporations and industrial commissioners, it was possible to start a development process involving interaction between the SMEs and all the various regions and microregions.

According to a study by Marc-Urbain Proulx, an expert on economic development in Quebec, in a market economy whose many weaknesses are compensated for by more concerted action by authorities at all three levels of government, development plans for MRCs in Quebec are mainly aimed at integrating a variety of activities.

What causes duplication, overlap and poor management of funds is the failure to recognize existing structures. In this context, a parallel network of 13 regional offices, or FORD-Qs, in Quebec is unjustified, constitutes duplication of services and is basically squandering public funds. This is an example, among existing direct assistance to small business and direct funding support to small and medium-sized businesses. Liberal members from Quebec should advise their colleagues of the existence of such a major development and financial assistance structure for small and medium-sized businesses at the regional level, and I am coming to this.

Quebec has its own regional development secretariat under the responsibility of a minister of state for regional development. This House must realize that there is no reason for federal involvement in regional development. Federal involvement complicates greatly government intervention to help small and medium-sized businesses. Regional development boards have been in existence for over 30 years and, with tools such as regional initiatives funds and business assistance funds-our suggestion is not off the wall; it is the same kind of instrument-these boards provide direct assistance to small business.

The development secretariats I referred to earlier can also assist small business with tools such as local initiatives funds and decentralized job creation funds. In the field, other stakeholders actively support small and medium-sized businesses. Take the Solidarity Fund, the industrial development corporation and the regional investment corporation for example. Note the smooth industrial development in the Sherbrooke area, where small and medium-sized businesses from nine municipalities have trade relations and agreements with the United States, particularly the northeastern states, including the city of Hartford, have access to markets and prosper.

To conclude, out of solidarity with the Quebec government and state and in support of the initiative of the Quebec minister of state for regional development, the Bloc Quebecois asks that the Liberal government withdraw from regional development and transfer to Quebec the federal regional development envelope.

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Including the minutes taken up by the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood, Mr. Speaker?

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that it hurts when we discuss regional development and refer specifically to small businesses in remote regions. This is what I am talking about. This is related to the motion tabled. It hurts the hon. member, but he is depriving me of some of the time allotted to me.

[Standing Committee On Industry, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to government motion No. 16 on the Second Report of the Standing Committee on Industry, for two important reasons.

Primarily, first of all, there is regional development. There is all the energy, efforts and action with respect to regional development in Quebec, and I am speaking about true regional development that will reach all the administrative regions in Quebec, not just the major centres or the large cities, but the furthest reaches of all administrative regions.

This is an exercise that has been going on in Quebec since 1984. It is a major exercise in defining regional development in the regions, and a series of framework agreements are now being signed, region by region, with respect to economic development.

I would simply like to tell my government colleagues across the way that regional development is Quebec's business and that it is in order to avoid duplication, in order to increase the efficiency of actions and investments in regional development that all the members of the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition, are simply asking that the federal government withdraw from regional development in Quebec.

"The Bloc Québécois Members of Parliament on the Standing Committee on Industry are of the opinion that the Government of Quebec is in the best position to recognize the financing requirements of SMEs, and to develop and implement programs". So reads the first sentence in the dissenting report by the Bloc Quebecois members of Parliament on the Standing Committee on Industry, of which I am a member, studying access to financing for SMEs.

I therefore propose to take this opportunity to speak to government motion No. 16 in order to broaden the debate and thus express the dissent of the Bloc Quebecois, which continues and which is linked to the federal government's overall approach to regional development in Quebec.

The Bloc Quebecois is opposed to the interference of the federal government in regional development for two very specific reasons. First, because the federal government, instead of eliminating regional disparities, only made them worse, while precipitating the disintegration of peripheral regions, as its action was limited to central regions.

Let us be quite clear. I mentioned earlier that regional development in Quebec concerned all remote areas, and not central ones such as major cities. One master agreement after another is being signed with the Quebec government respecting the economic development of all areas. But such federal initiative has traditionally been limited to major urban centers and has literally caused the disintegration of peripheral regions, that is to say those regions outside of major urban centers.

Second, federal government initiatives within Quebec has been synonymous with the duplication of organizations. And my hon. colleagues know it full well. We all know of overlapping responsibilities and instances of horizontal and vertical duplication. They have been identified and the government even indicated it was prepared to eliminate this overlap and duplication in public administrations which are basically mismanaged since public funds are being squandered over various structures that serve essentially the same function. In time, this adds up, as we have seen, to billions of dollars and we end up today with a major deficit in the federal budget.

As for the disintegration of peripheral regions, I want to make something quite clear to our colleagues opposite. Since 1974, with the Liberals in power at the federal level, regional development was generally funded under federal-provincial agreements to which subsidiary agreements were added, as you know.

All these agreements covering the decade from 1974 to 1984 -these were 10-year contracts- totalled $1.8 billion, 26 per cent of which was earmarked for the greater Montreal region and 4 per cent for Quebec City. This means that 30 per cent of the total budget for this first set of so-called regional development agreements went to central regions. This first Canada-Quebec umbrella agreement for 1974-84 followed on the 1970 report by Higgins, Martin and Rénaud, which had been ordered in 1969, as you will surely recall, by the federal Department of Regional Economic Expansion, DREE, for the purpose of directing the federal government's activities for economic development in Quebec. So it meant a doubling of federal involvement in economic development in Quebec.

This report concluded that Quebec's economic weakness was due to the weakness of its only major centre, Montreal. As a result, the federal government's active involvement in Quebec in the 1970s set the tone for its approach to Quebec and did considerable harm to the Quebec government's regional development policies. The federal government sees a whole region or province as the focus of its regional development efforts. The federal government does not consider the geographic and demographic regions that make up a province.

From 1972 to 1984, regional development focused on certain growth centres. That was the approach. The way to a better distribution of wealth involved industrial solutions concentrated in urban areas. The policies adopted were disastrous for the outlying regions since the urban centres went a different way and it aggravated the rural crisis by draining workers, resources and capital.

I will explain the prime example which concerns the allocation of the budget and the corrective action that can be taken.

A second umbrella agreement was signed in 1984, in effect extending the first one for ten years. Knowing full well that outlying regions are breaking down, they renewed a $1.7 billion agreement for this period, allocating 36 per cent of the budget to Greater Montreal and 10 per cent to Quebec City. Between 1984 and 1994, the federal government increased its involvement in central regions to the detriment of outlying regions.

On the subject of regional development, it is important to respect the extraordinary dynamics between small and medium-sized businesses, municipalities and all stakeholders in the areas of education and health to organize a region in such a way as to prevent an exodus of our young people. This situation-the exodus of our young people and the aging of our population-is one that the hon. member is experiencing in his own region and that is also being experienced in other regions of Canada.

The subsidiary agreements that make up this second Canada-Quebec agreement, such as the regional and economic development agreement signed in 1988, confirm the existing structural inequalities. Businesses are allowed to set up shop in and develop central regions where they will find a concentration of people, a market. For some businesses, it is better to be based in a densely-populated area with a market of 2 million people than to move to an outlying region.

As we are fully aware, small and medium-sized businesses have different distribution systems for their products. Exporting businesses, in particular, can be based outside major centres, since they can ship their exports by road or other types of transportation allowing them to set up shop elsewhere.

Quebec regions are in an advanced state of disintegration. The demographic weakening of outlying regions is symptomatic of the state of degradation in several regions. The population of outlying regions continues to decline dramatically, especially in rural areas, thus compromising the settlement and viability of these regions. You are aware that people in every region fight to keep plants, small businesses, schools and even whole villages from closing.

This legislation tabled by the new Liberal government to establish the Department of Industry is patterned on the centralizing principle which has always prevailed within that party, in that it provides the same rigid and heavily centralized structures, as well as national standards for the whole territory.

We will still have an across-the-board policy applying to all of the very large Canadian territory, regardless of the particular situation in the various regions.

Take a look at how program services and business services are split within the regional operations branch of the department. It says very clearly-and the member who tabled this motion should listen-in the development program of the Department of Industry, under the heading "Regional Offices", that: "This component establishes a general framework designed to promote excellence and competitiveness in every region of the country. Regional offices participate in the development of policies designed to promote the fulfilment of national objectives". We are back to square one, because these are precisely the national objectives which ruined remote regions in Quebec.

By integrating the federal offices of regional development and transforming them into service centres for Canadian businesses, the Liberal government creates a single window to provide information on federal, provincial and municipal programs and services in Quebec, with the objective of-

[Crtc, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in his letter on ministerial letterhead, the minister goes even further, offering to provide the CRTC personally with additional information on the licence application.

Has the Prime Minister really read this letter, and if so, how can he not conclude that the CRTC would assume that he was writing in his capacity as minister?

[Crtc, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

In his letter to the CRTC, the Minister of Canadian Heritage wrote that he wished to be kept abreast of developments in the matter. Does the Prime Minister not realize that in so writing, the Minister of Canadian Heritage is putting pressure on the CRTC to issue a licence?

[Parliament Hill, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as my party's critic for parliamentary affairs, instead of responding to the substance of this ministerial statement, I must inform the minister that although there were discussions between the parties on the Board of Internal Economy, that is no excuse for not advising us of the content so that we can do our job.

I repeat that the basic objective of the Official Opposition in this system is to do a good job by monitoring the government and government operations and by defending the interests of our fellow citizens.

Since the beginning of this 35th Parliament, as far as parliamentary affairs are concerned, it was tacitly understood that the opposition would get the information a few hours before ministers made their statements. The purpose of this understanding was to help us do our job as well and as democratically as possible. In this particular case, we seem to be right in the parliamentary stone age.

The opposition's role is to monitor the government's administration. What disturbs us in this particular case, which concerns the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, is that we lack the detailed information we need to be able to respond, and I must say it is particularly difficult for members to obtain information from this department. This is a closed department, a department that distributes contracts and also a department where members find it extremely difficult to get information. For instance, when low-cost housing projects are officially opened in Quebec, the department, according to its own particular protocol, invites all the provincial members, mayors, and so forth, except the members of the Official Opposition. This is the kind of department and the kind of minister we find disturbing.

This morning, we cannot do our job because of the kind of behaviour that is typical of a department that is so secretive that it tables documents at the last minute.

That is why we cannot respond on the substance of this statement and, in the name of democracy, we regret that we cannot. And again, we may remind everyone, and especially the minister's colleagues, that this is the most difficult department from which to get information.

[Points Of Order, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, since the beginning of the 35th Parliament, it was understood by the party in power and the Official Opposition that the latter would receive prior notice of a minister's statement. We all know that our role in this House is to do our job as well as we can, in the best interest of the citizens of this country. Today, however, this understanding has been compromised by the fact that a ministerial statement will be made without prior notice to the opposition. We feel that this makes it difficult for us to play our role.