Mr. Speaker, how can the minister explain that, while the ten premiers agree on social union, he is the one dragging his feet, the one in no hurry, the one who seems to want to sabotage the talks?
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2000, with 50% of the vote.
Social Union November 26th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, how can the minister explain that, while the ten premiers agree on social union, he is the one dragging his feet, the one in no hurry, the one who seems to want to sabotage the talks?
Social Union November 26th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the premiers of Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec once again asked that the social union issue be settled before the next federal budget.
However, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs says there is no urgency and that it would be easier to negotiate with a federalist government in Quebec.
Does the minister realize that, in making this comment, he is sending us the message that with a more docile government in Quebec, a Jean Charest government, provincial demands would be lesser and thus easier to meet for the federal government?
Social Union November 23rd, 1998
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the premiers of Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan asked the federal government again, as they did last summer in Saskatoon, to restore by the next budget funding that was cut from health and to stop interfering in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
My question is for the Minister of Justice, who is responsible for the social union. Can the minister tell us if the federal government intends to settle the social union issue before the end of 1998, as unanimously requested by the premiers?
Intergovernmental Affairs November 20th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers will soon be settling that debate.
Yesterday we saw the Minister of Immigration trying to score some political points for “Le printemps au Québec”, an event held in Paris, by brandishing the maple leaf on the international scene, and thus overshadowing Quebec culture.
Does the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs plan to continue to improve Canada by making every effort to eclipse Quebec on the international scene?
Intergovernmental Affairs November 20th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, yesterday I asked the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs a question, but got no response. The minister had obviously put in the wrong tape.
I would therefore like to ask him the same question again. If the minister is as great a consensus-producer as he claims to be, how can he explain that he was not trusted by the Prime Minister to handle the matter of social union, when it comes under his mandate? Why was he denied this responsibility?
Intergovernmental Affairs November 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, if the minister is so efficient and so extraordinary, how can he explain that, in the important matter of social union, which was supposed to be his responsibility, the Prime Minister chose to foist it off onto the Minister of Justice?
Intergovernmental Affairs November 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, although at the time certain commentators were labelling him a saboteur, yesterday the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs was boasting that he had been the main architect of the regulations on French and English school boards and on manpower.
Will the minister acknowledge that, in order to settle the manpower question, which the Prime Minister at one point labelled a whim of Quebec, it took a sovereignist delegation to Ottawa and a sovereignist government in Quebec, and his role was merely that of a messenger of the federal government?
Supply November 19th, 1998
Madam Speaker, this almost sounded like a speech. I will have a hard time commenting on all the issues raised.
I will quote from a document that is not from the Bloc Quebecois, but from the Library of Parliament: “During the 80s and 90s, the federal government, in its effort to reduce the deficit, limited on several occasions the growth of transfers made under two programs, namely the Canada Assistance Plan and the cost sharing programs. This adversely affected the provinces' public finances and their ability to financially maintain their health insurance plans and social programs”.
A document from the Library of Parliament states that this government adversely affected the provinces' ability to maintain their health insurance plans. This study was released in July 1997.
I will now quote some figures, which I have here with me. For the coming year, the Quebec government will spend $13 billion on health and social programs. This is the same amount as in 1996-97.
The amount of money allocated to health and social programs by the Quebec government remains at a very stable level. It is true that, because of growth, this means that, in real terms, some cuts were made. The actions taken by the federal government during its last mandate resulted in a $7 billion shortfall for the Quebec government.
When the member says that the Quebec government made cuts totalling $3 billion or $4 billion, he should congratulate it for having managed to somehow absorb half of the cuts, instead of passing them on to someone else. The member should be pleased and he should congratulate the Quebec government for having successfully met that challenge, in spite of this blow—I was going to use some unparliamentary language—from the federal government.
Let me elaborate on these figures and give them a regional dimension. Back home, in the Abitibi—Témiscamingue region, federal cuts in health amount to $25 million annually. This is the equivalent of the budget of the general hospitals in Val-d'Or, Amos and Rouyn-Noranda, and even more. After making cuts of $25 million in my region, the federal government is now claiming that health is one of its major concerns. Nobody believes them, and it is certainly not the member for Vaudreuil—Soulanges who will make people change their minds about that.
Supply November 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, one member asked us to listen a few moments ago, and I would now ask him to return the favour and to please listen.
I will move right now to another part of my speech to please him. We will soon have a debate on reinvestment. This is one of the goals the federal government will pursue now that it has a surplus. After slashing transfers to the provinces and getting more money from the unemployed, the workers and the employers who pay EI premiums but find it harder now to qualify for benefits, the federal government has racked up an accumulated surplus of $10.4 billion in the first six months of this fiscal year.
It is a lot of money. And now, they are really excited at the prospect of spending it as they see fit. As the health minister said yesterday and as the Prime Minister has said before, health will now become one of their priorities, all of a sudden. It was not a priority when they were making cuts. Health was not one of their priorities at that time or they would not have made the cuts they made.
I find it strange to see them taking part in today's debate. It seems that the former health minister is now suddenly wide awake. When she was in cabinet, not once did she speak against the government. We have to wonder if she even tried to step in to protect the health of Canadians, as her department kept getting slashed. As far as transfers to the provinces are concerned, she never said a word and now she wakes up and in good conscience says “We are addressing health concerns”.
How will they go about it now? They want more visibility. We can see how frustrated they feel when they talk about tax point transfers. What they are not saying is that they are terribly sorry to have granted tax points to the provinces, because of the visibility they could have gained from them.
They will start to reinvest in health, but you can be sure that there will be strings attached. Given how obsessed they are with visibility, you can be sure that this will be one of the main criteria used to assess programs. Even before assessing the real needs, they will try to determine how the money they spend can increase their visibility. That is what we can expect.
Yet, they never asked for visibility when they were making cuts. When an hon. member talked about five hospitals being closed, we could have said “Here are the hospitals being closed thanks to the federal government”. But funny how at that time they did not ask for their contribution to be acknowledged.
We hear a lot about reinvesting in equipment. Medicine and technologies evolve quickly. I am sure they look forward to investing in equipment and gaining some visibility by sticking the maple leaf on it.
The first piece of equipment the federal government should sponsor is hospital scalpels engraved with “Best wishes from the federal government” to remind people of the cuts it has made over the last few years and the problems it has created for several provinces.
Let us have a look at what has happened in the area of health care across the country. Maclean's magazine carried an analysis accurately describing the situation in each province: a high percentage of real cuts in Quebec as well as in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Only the territories found themselves in a better position than before with regard to transfer payments. Two provinces, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, were less affected.
I will not start debating at this point what the federal government has been doing behind the scene to compensate the maritime provinces for these cuts. We could mention the GST compensation scheme under which it gave them $1 billion to soften the impact.
We were, and still are every day, in a situation where the government opposite is withdrawing. Initially several health care programs were jointly funded by both levels of government; it was a 50:50 partnership.
Today the federal government barely pays for a quarter of some health programs and in certain provinces it is even less than that. It has substantially reduced its share. There is a reason why, when all the provinces met, they unanimously urged the federal government to return the money it had cut to all the provinces because this government believes some provinces are better than others; there are some provincial governments it likes and others it does not.
But it made no distinction in this case. All the provincial governments said that it was enough, that the government had gone too far. This government does not even have the excuse it used these last years when it said that the nation's finances forced it to make such cuts. It has always been hard for the government to admit it, but when it did reluctantly, it used the nation's finances as an excuse.
We now have a $10.4 billion surplus just for the first six months of this year. That surplus will grow in the coming months. Despite the economic problems experienced in recent months at the international level, we now know their impact on Canada has been a lot less severe than expected and that the government's fiscal revenues are substantially the same.
From Quebec's point of view, what does that mean? While we, in Quebec, continue to fight to eliminate the deficit, make the last efforts to get there, find creative ways of finishing the tough job started by Quebeckers, we are sending half of our tax revenues to the federal government that has a surplus of some $2 billion for the first six months. And we cannot take that money to reinvest it according to our priorities because the federal government has decided to define them for us.
I will be sharing my time with the member for Mercier. Therefore, I have about one minute left.
What happened in the area of education is a perfect example. We have not talked about the cuts made by the Liberals in education. It was the same as with health care. They took the money from the surplus to set up a foundation that would offer scholarships and give the federal government a high profile in the field of education.
They are now preparing to do the same thing to us in the field of health. After making us suffer considerably, they want to reinvest, with only one thing in mind: visibility.
I am pleased to see that all the parties in opposition will be supporting this motion, that all provinces are calling for it, and that this government is feeling increasingly isolated with its talk of the present situation not being so bad, not its fault, that the tax points must not be forgotten, and so on.
They are getting pretty isolated and soon will have to come up with an answer for the provincial premiers. They will also have to vote—and I am anxious to see how they act when it comes to voting on this motion—in favour of putting the money back where the key priority lies at the present time, in health.
It cannot be done any old way. It must be included in the transfers to the provinces so they can inject money into sectors currently considered priorities, into new services and into areas of need created by the aging of the population. The provincial governments, which already administer health care, are in the best position to define the most pressing needs.
I warn them about all their juggling of figures, files and individuals in this matter. Health is not their main priority. There should be no mistake. Their main priority is visibility, not health. If it were, we would not be in this situation today of having a $10 billion surplus, when the government savagely cut transfers to the provinces. These cuts hurt.
At the outset, I said that it was for political purposes. I suspect they will reinvest in the coming year, but after the Quebec and Ontario elections. These are two governments they do not particularly like, which make lots of demands on and are a little too critical of federal Liberals. They will try to help their provincial Liberal friends in Quebec and Ontario by destabilizing the health system, and they will wait and see what happens. Then, if this does not work, they will see what they can do about it afterwards.
It is in this spirit that I along with all my colleagues from all the opposition parties will support this motion before us today.
Supply November 19th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, it is my turn to speak to the motion brought forward by the Bloc, asking the federal government to reinvest in our health care system after putting several provinces in dire financial straits.
Some of those provinces are not allies of the government. I am thinking about Quebec and Ontario, among others. The federal government is playing politics with our health care system to try to destabilize certain political figures that it does not particularly care for.
What happened? The member who just spoke referred to a lot of figures. If we look at the Fiscal Monitor , published by the Department of Finance, we can see clearly that transfers to the provinces went from more or less $18 billion to today's cash floor of $12.5 billion.
They are telling us that we should be glad since they had planned on reducing it to $11 billion, but they stopped at $12.5 billion. The cash floor is slightly higher than was planned. Today, we should all rise and applaud them for saving us this additional cut that would have reduced the Canada social transfer by another $1.5 billion. Now we get to—