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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was quebec.

Last in Parliament October 2000, as Liberal MP for Hull—Aylmer (Québec)

Won his last election, in 1997, with 54% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Collège Militaire Royal De Saint-Jean March 15th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that the opposition is so concerned about bilingualism. I want to congratulate them. It is about time they address this issue.

We, on this side, are concerned with the whole situation. The only problem I have to deal with is an agreement with the province about the future use of the facilities at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean.

Bilingualism and the use of French in the armed forces are commitments we fulfilled in the past and which we will continue to discharge, according to my colleague, the minister of National Defence.

Collège Militaire Royal De Saint-Jean March 15th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, at this time, the government intends to lease the facilities and the land of the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean for the amount of $1 a year. That in itself constitutes an important contribution.

The provincial government will have the possibility of transforming the buildings in order to create a university or a post-graduate school of some kind. In such a case, evidently the provincial government will be the one using the facilities for activities of its choice and it will therefore have to pay the operating costs for the courses given there.

The federal government's contribution will be the facilities' value, the provincial government's contribution will be the operating costs for the courses that will be given there.

Collège Militaire Royal De Saint-Jean March 15th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, as I just said, we do not negotiate in public. We indicated to Quebec government officials what our terms are, and they, in turn, informed us of their preferences. There is no disagreement between ministers of this government, including the Prime Minister, because we looked at this issue together. It will take a few days or weeks before the outcome of the process is known.

Collège Militaire Royal De Saint-Jean March 15th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, we are negotiating with officials from the Quebec government to determine the best possible use for the facilities in Saint-Jean.

When you are negotiating, it is somewhat like a poker game. It would be too easy to put all your cards on the table. What I indicated yesterday was that the federal government was prepared to negotiate on the basis of renting for $1 per year the buildings and the property, which are valued at about $42 million. This is the basis of our negotiating position. The details will be known later.

Aboriginal Affairs March 11th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, it is quite important that the concept be discussed among the aboriginal people and discussed by the various stakeholders in the country, including federal and provincial governments and the aboriginal people.

We cannot of course define the content of the concept until it has been negotiated with the various parties. This is what we will do over the next few years, I hope with the co-operation of the opposition parties.

Aboriginal Affairs March 11th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, the concept of self-government in Indian affairs is one which was used in the red book. It is not a concept that is fully defined. The concept will have to be defined as it is put into place over time. There is no doubt that federal-provincial co-operation will be necessary. As this slowly develops we will give all the details to hon. members.

Aboriginal Affairs March 11th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, these extremely important questions require complex answers. It would be better if the questions could be deferred until the minister of Indian affairs can be here to answer them.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95 February 25th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member of the Opposition has presented me with a challenge in giving me some 30 to 45 seconds to talk about the role of governments and the elimination of overlap.

Consequently, I will only address the policy issues. There is no doubt in my mind that the government or public sector has grown too big in recent years and that it tried to provide too many services, a large number of which could have been provided more efficiently by the private sector. Our three levels of government-federal, provincial and municipal-must act more responsibly in fiscal matters and review all their services to the population so that we can finally offer the same quality of service for much less.

The division of responsibilities among the various levels of government is clearly something we need much more time to discuss, since it is a fundamental issue. However, I fully agree with the hon. member that we should reduce overlap as much as possible, as it is expensive and unnecessary.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95 February 25th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to answer that type of intervention. Certainly I feel at ease when dealing with questions on the public service.

I greatly appreciated my hon. colleague's opening remarks. I must say that, when you are familiar with the civil service, you often get a much better feel for the kind of problems it faces. In recent years, the Government of Quebec has imposed a number of wage freezes and cuts that civil servants did not take too well.

I can understand that. When, as a civil servant, I was seeing the wage gap widen between the public and the private sector, especially at the senior levels, I too found it hard to take.

In the context of the last budget, I think that it is important to see that, with this wage freeze, we are in fact protecting the job security of our civil servants. It was a hard move to make, but given the context, it was clear that cuts were required not only in government programs, but also in operating budgets.

To compensate for wage increases, we would have had to reduce the number of employees in the Public Service. Considering, as I said, that two thirds of private sector employees either had no increase or a negative increase, we determined that the sacrifice asked from federal civil servants was not disproportionate, as compared to those who are seeing their military base close down in Atlantic Canada or those affected by the decision to withdraw from the KAON project in British Columbia or to reduce the level of activity or close military bases in the Prairies and in Ontario.

Under those circumstances, while I agree entirely with my colleague on the principles of good management for a public service, I must say that I fully support the decision made in this budget to freeze wages.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95 February 25th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his kind words at the beginning of his remarks. I would like to point out something, in terms of principles.

There is no doubt that any government in the modern world now must be extremely careful in the way it allocates its expenditures because the days of the fat cats have disappeared. No longer will we face a time when governments, whether municipal, federal, provincial in Canada or elsewhere in OECD countries, have enough free money that they can afford to waste a cent of it.

Voters in all OECD countries have expressed very clearly in recent years that they are much more aware of what governments do, that they watch governments much more carefully and that they will not permit their governments to be wasteful.

On the question of principle I must say I agree entirely with the hon. member. It is always in the application of principles that reasonable people disagree. There may be a large number of actual expenditures where we on this side of the House feel there is full justification for spending the taxpayers' money and where members of the other parties in the House may indicate different priorities. I believe this is democracy.

We have to offer to voters in our country a number of choices, as I think we did quite clearly in the red book. We have to ask

them to vote for parties that offer very different priorities in terms of their expenditure plans in particular. We did that.

We not only indicated our intention to bite a few extremely difficult bullets in terms of expenditures such as in the case of defence, but we had the courage to do this year in the budget what governments in the last 30 years have not had the political courage to do, namely to cut infrastructure expenditures that had become unnecessary because we had finished the second world war and were moving into a period in which international relations were very different.

I take this example of military expenditures because it involves literally over the years billions and billions of dollars; in fact $7.4 billion over the next five years. It is much more important for a government to have a clear idea of its long-term views and priorities so that it can make reductions in expenditures or reductions in waste that will permit the country to meet its long-term need for fiscal responsibility and to better use its money.

In the various items the hon. member mentioned there may be ways of reducing waste. I would fully agree with him that we should reduce that waste to an absolute minimum. In the budget we saw in terms of the large numbers and in terms of the difficult decisions that we have agreed and we have taken the right decisions.