Mr. Speaker, during the last election campaign the Liberal Party of Canada, wishing the Canadian electorate to be well informed of its intentions, published an important document entitled "Creating opportunity". As you have probably guessed, the ultimate purpose of that paper was to kick Progressive Conservatives out of power and replace them by a team determined to create jobs, fight unemployment and not the unemployed, and make sure that the deficit would not be tackled at the expense of the poorest. That document is the red book.
Millions of Canadians, in particular in Ontario and in the Maritimes, believed in it and were deluded. Quebecers and Westerners proved to be more cautious and shrewd. Only 30 per cent of Quebec voters, for instance, trusted the Liberal Party.
Now that they have reached their goal, the Liberals who are in government must act and show concretely that they really are different from the bad Conservatives.
However, they missed a first opportunity to prove it with the speech from the throne, a text rife with clichés, pious hopes and vague declarations of intent. Subsequently, Mr. Speaker, the government, under the finance minister's leadership, embarked in extensive consultations with a view to outlining the first Liberal budget, a much touted about exercise which was to bring hope back to Canadians from coast to coast.
This great event took place on February 22, 1994, at 5 p.m. What a disappointment! The red book is becoming increasingly valuable. Never since, have the Liberals being able to find free-lance writers with such lucidity, such imagination, such insight, and so able to develop new solutions.
As a matter of fact, one must accept the obvious, that this government is following right in the previous government's footsteps by attacking not unemployment but rather the unemployed, when it announced that it intended to renew and revitalize, to use its own words, Canada's social security system within two years.
And yet, the red book did say, on page 73 and 74 of the English version:
The failed economic and social policies of the Conservative regime have left 1.6 million people out of work and 4.2 million Canadians living in poverty, of whom 1.2 million are children; and 62 per cent of families headed by single mothers are living in poverty with their incomes falling.
Since 1984, the Tories have systematically weakened the social support network that took generations to build. [-]they have taken billions of dollars from health care and from programs that support children, seniors, and people who have lost their jobs-
And yet, in its first budget, this government announces to us that henceforth, people will have to work longer in order to collect 5 per cent less in unemployment insurance and that the revitalization of social security will mean savings of roughly $7.5 billion at the expense of the least fortunate.
Another example that is particularly interesting to me, in my capacity as industry critic, is that of industrial conversion as mentioned on page 55 of the red book.
The defence industries today employ directly and indirectly over 100,000 Canadians. The end of the Cold War puts at risk tens of thousands of high-tech jobs. A Liberal government will introduce a defence conversion program to help industries in transition from high-tech military production to high-tech civilian production.
Since being elected, this government has not mentioned this subject again, except once, very cautiously, in the budget plan when it stated that it would not proceed until 1996-1997. Yet, two projects that have been shelved could satisfy the need for diversification by utilizing both human resources and budgets. I am referring to the establishment of a high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Windsor, via Trois-Rivières, and to the awarding of a contract to MIL Davie of Lauzon, a company which specializes in the building of military ships. Having drawn up its own plan to convert from military to civilian production, this company needs the encouragement of the federal government, which it would get if awarded the contract to build the Magdalen Islands ferry.
Not a word about these two issues, Mr. Speaker, in the budget speech or elsewhere.
So what are we to make then of such behaviour by the government? Is it cynicism or contempt? Is it just a way to fool the people so that they can take power by saying or promising anything? How can one reconcile such behaviour with the parliamentary integrity mentioned in the red book on page 90, where it says that cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians, and the political process is at an all-time high? Is this government not giving Canadians and Quebecers new reasons to be cynical?
But that is not all. So far, we have seen some commitments made during the election campaign which have not been kept by this government. It will also do some things that it never mentioned before. I am thinking, for example, of the decision
announced in the budget speech to close the military college in Saint-Jean.
Since Quebec receives only 15 per cent of national spending by the defence department, we think that it is an unfair and unacceptable decision that we can only denounce.
Moreover, if we think back to the reasons and the historical background for setting up this institution, it is an unjustifiable decision which shows the failure of a certain Trudeau-style federalism where bilingualism would be recognized everywhere and francophones and anglophones would have equal opportunities in this great united Canada.
To suggest that French-speaking Quebecers can get along easily in Kingston and go ahead as if nothing had changed, as the Minister of Defence suggests, shows naivety or bad faith.
Here is what an eminent citizen of Trois-Rivières, a constituent of mine whom I salute gladly, the first francophone chief of staff of the Canadian armed forces, General Jean Victor Allard, said in the local daily Le Nouvelliste of February 26, 1994: ``It is ridiculous to think that Kingston can offer bilingual training''.
The front page of La Presse yesterday, March 6, carried the following headline: ``No services in French in Kingston''.
Unless this is an operation brilliantly orchestrated to allow the current Premier of Quebec, Mr. Johnson, to make political capital out of this event in complicity with his Liberal cousins in Ottawa. That is what awaits French-speaking Quebecers in the increasingly unitarian, centralized and impoverished Canada of tomorrow, where Quebec will weigh less and less in demographic terms.
This federalist complicity is also remarkable with regard to one impact of the changes to unemployment insurance concerning the percentage and duration of benefits. Unemployed workers will go more rapidly from the federal unemployment insurance program to provincial social assistance programs. It is estimated that the bill will reach at least $1 billion for all the provinces, including $280 million for Quebec.
The Liberal Premier of Quebec, Daniel Johnson, a federalist, has been very silent on this question so far, in spite of leading a government whose deficit will amount to close to $5 billion and which cannot afford to give presents to the federal Liberal government.
It is this same federalist brotherhood that will come to Quebec in the next few months to preach the Canadian gospel to the people of Quebec, to try to sell the merits of financially viable federalism, to say that francophones have their place everywhere in Canada and that the doors are wide open from the Rockies to Percé Rock.
This brotherhood includes Mulroney, Trudeau, Johnson, Ryan, the hon. member for Saint-Maurice and even the hon. member for Sherbrooke who, united by the Holy Spirit and by mutual interests, will explain to Quebecers that dependence is better than independence, that it is better to be a minority than a majority, that Quebec cannot be anything but a province and, what is more, a province like any other. That is their opinion but it is not ours. We will talk about this again, Mr. Speaker.
