Mr. Speaker, unlike my colleagues, I am not too pleased to speak on Motion No. 17, because for me it is a waste of time. This motion is mainly about tabling a committee report. Imagine the time we take while people, taxpayers, Canadians are worried and unemployed and have no solutions. What Canadians and Quebecers want is a government that acts, a government that will present programs and do things to put people back to work and give them some pride. That is what Canadians expect of us.
Excuse me, Mr. Speaker. I forgot to tell you at the beginning that I was sharing my time with my colleague.
In the present economic situation, of course, the debt is $150 billion-everyone says so and condemns it. Everyone knows the cuts that could be made when preparing a shopping list but no one ever makes them. We are not presented with anything to do it. When facing such an economic situation, of course they want to hide and above all they want to avoid debating the government's finances.
Why? I ask you why they want to avoid this debate. It is time. The people have been consulted. It is time to come up with something.
Are we ashamed of the budgetary policies that they want to bring in to control the deficit? Are they ashamed to apply them? Of course I would be ashamed to hold phony pre-budget consultations, if my budget strategy, already established in
advance, was to reduce the deficit on the backs of the poor, welfare recipients, the unemployed and especially students and to slash transfers to the provinces. This is what the Liberal government wants to do, but it does not dare to put it on the table for discussion. It holds phony consultations. It wants to limit debate so as not to make too many waves.
The government set a target for deficit reduction of $39.7 billion. This same government also says that a change of policy is needed to put its finances back in order. This government's budget policy has three main thrusts: economic recovery, attacking the poor and cutting transfers to the provinces, as I shall explain.
On the subject of economic recovery, the Minister of Finance says that 80 per cent of the federal deficit is structural. The fact that it is structural means that the deficit has nothing to do with the current economic conditions, or with the unemployed. Contrary to what this government thinks, Quebecers and Canadians are faced with a structural unemployment problem and they are not out of work by choice.
The Liberals sincerely believe that a large proportion of jobless people are lazy and are unemployed by choice. The Liberals also think that they will stimulate employment by forcing many unemployed individuals to look, and I emphasize the word look, for work. Yet, jobless people constantly come to our constituency offices to find out about programs. But these programs are in a state of chaos. Employment centres cannot keep up with the demand for work. The fact is that our unemployed are energetic and more than willing to work. It is the structure which is at fault.
The government's policy consists in targeting the poor by making cuts in social programs. The government wants to cut $7.5 billion in the budget allocated to these programs. However, it will not eliminate the deficit by targeting the poor. Instead of making thoughtless cuts through their social program reform, the Liberals should define clear and specific objectives, and they should also develop a job-creation policy, as they promised they would in their red book and during the last election campaign. They have failed miserably on this one. Indeed, they only managed to create a few temporary jobs through the infrastructure program.
The Liberal government also wants to reduce the deficit by making unilateral cuts, with no compensation, in transfer payments to the provinces. The Minister of Finance is once again passing the buck to the provinces. The debt will not go away by depriving the provinces of $2.6 billion. Other solutions are needed to eliminate that debt, as well as the deficit.
The Minister of Finance keeps asking us for suggestions. We say that the time has come to eliminate duplication and overlapping with the provinces. Ottawa must withdraw from those sectors which fall under provincial jurisdiction, and it must compensate the provinces accordingly. Eliminating federal interference will translate into savings of $3 billion for Quebec alone. Moreover, Quebec would finally be able to devise its own integrated policy regarding job creation, a policy that would really answer the needs of Quebec men and women.
However, the Bloc Quebecois agrees with the Minister of Finance when he says that the deficit cannot be eliminated simply by cutting government spending. This is why we have made fair and equitable proposals that would lead to savings of $34.5 billion. These proposals should be taken seriously by the government, because they are far above the $25.6 billion savings that the government wants to realize at the expense of the neediest, mostly by cutting unemployment insurance and transfer payments to the provinces for education.
The Liberal government should draw up a budget which would focus on cuts in government spending and in subsidies to companies which do not undertake to create jobs, in its deficit reduction measures. Programs should be managed more efficiently, that is to say we should have sound management of business subsidies. We should stop giving money to companies which are neither productive nor competitive, money which is very often a form of patronage. We are talking about $3.3 billion here. It is high time that the minister and his government look squarely at the problem and stop dumping their problems on the provinces.
The red book promises jobs, and the Liberal government must adopt concrete job creation policies to bring us back to pre-recession employment levels. We need close to 825,000 new jobs, a far cry from the 45,000 temporary jobs they created during the past year. They still have a long way to go.
Let the government keep another one of its promises: not to raise taxes. To this end, the time has come to review certain tax loopholes enjoyed by high-income earners and big corporations. We all know in this House that family trusts, which are an important tool used in tax planning, are for the government a source of losses we can assess. According to some tax experts, they amount to several hundreds of millions of dollars.
The government has the tools to disclose the value of the assets in these trusts. Let the government tell us how much money is lost in tax revenues. This question was raised on several occasions in different committees. We never got an answer. But above all, let the government be true to its position when it was in the opposition, when it opposed delaying payment of taxes on capital gains until the death of the last beneficiary.
The finance minister and his government must come forward and say how they intend to deal with the nation's finances. Let them stop procrastinating and let us start tackling immediately one of the most pressing problems for our future, namely public
finance. This is the reason why the Bloc Quebecois is going to vote against the motion.