Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join the debate on the government’s economic statement, because it is at the heart of the democratic crisis that now exists in this Parliament.
Let us remember why an election was called. The Prime Minister had introduced and passed an act providing for fixed election dates. The next election was to take place in 2009. The Prime Minister said there was such a great economic urgency that an election was necessary. He went back on his own word and decided to call an election because of the economic situation.
So, we had an election, and a minority government was elected—a government that does not have a majority in this House. The message sent by the people was that the party forming the government should take account of the views of the opposition parties, when putting forward its proposals, in order to obtain that majority. One would have expected at least a neutral attitude on the part of the Conservative government toward the opposition parties, so this government could obtain their support on economic or less partisan matters. We could have debated the merits of the proposals, put them on the table and moved forward.
Instead of that, the economic statement was a provocation; they added fuel to the fire. For example, they said they would abolish public funding of parties. Do you know what that means? In Quebec, there has been a system of public funding of political parties for 30 years. There was no such system in Canada until a few years ago. The Conservative party decided to do away with that.
Next, they decided to take away the right to strike from public servants. That is another measure that goes against the wishes of the majority, here, in Parliament. The Conservatives thought they could bulldoze the opposition, especially since the Liberal party had lost the election. They were wrong. They fanned the flames when what they should have done, very simply, was to deliver a real economic statement dealing with economic measures.
The government even tampered with the issue of pay equity. This means that three groups of people are affected. There are those who want a healthy democracy, who want the citizens to decide. However, the government said no, we have to go back to the system where it is the businesses that decide. That was the first mistake. Then, the government targeted pay equity by tossing aside all the efforts made by women to achieve equality. The government wants to deprive them of their instrument, it wants to shelve everything.
That is indeed what happened. However, when the government realized that the opposition was standing up to it, it suddenly backed off on each and everyone of its proposals. Public financing was no longer a critical issue, and nor was the right to strike. Worse still is the fact that there is no plan in this economic statement to get the economy back on track. This is truly surreal, considering that the government called an election for that very reason.
We then submitted proposals, at the government's request. The Bloc Québécois tabled a number of them and several ministers said here in this House that this was a good thing, that it was constructive to move forward with those things. However, there is nothing in the economic statement. Throughout the world, whether in Europe, in Great Britain, in France, in Asia or in China, economic recovery plans are being implemented. As recently as yesterday, the UN said that massive investments are required for distribution and creation, to promote world development. However, the Conservative government decided to adopt the exact same attitude as the Republicans had done just before the 1929 crash. It took Franklin D. Roosevelt to get them out of that situation. The Conservatives and the current Prime Minister are behaving exactly like the Republicans, when the Americans had to kick them out in order to be able to emerge from the Great Depression. We find ourselves faced with the same situation.
The government was very surprised, therefore, that the opposition parties could stand up all of a sudden, when actually it was the general public who said they wanted an economic recovery plan. The Conservative government is so caught up in its ideology that it is incapable of making adjustments or proposing different ways of doing things. The opposition parties all told the government, therefore, that it would not have the confidence of the House on the basis of this economic statement.
We started to discuss what it would require of us all and what we could do together. The Bloc Québécois was a bit ahead of the game because we had made some proposals to the current government and submitted them to the parties that are going to form the next government, the Liberals and the New Democrats. These are things we have been requesting for years and I will provide some specific examples.
We have been asking for a program to help older workers who lose their jobs. A few years ago in my riding, Whirlpool closed a factory in Montmagny that provided 600 jobs. We started asking for the restitution of the program for older worker adjustment or POWA. We got some amendments in the Speech from the Throne to this effect, but the Conservatives never kept their promise.
The Conservatives have always considered older workers who lost their jobs to be just workers and not citizens. It never crosses their minds that these people, who have often worked and paid into employment insurance for 25 years, who supported their families for 30 years and are now 57 or 58 years old, deserve a program to help them reach retirement.
When we asked for this to be included in the coalition program, the other parties agreed. This is a tremendous victory for Quebec. It is a victory for all of Canada as well because it is a way to share the wealth. This is the kind of approach that the Conservatives are incapable of taking.
Then we asked for the elimination of the two week waiting period for employment insurance. Is there any greater security we could provide to our working people in recessionary times? When people lose their jobs, from now on, they will be able to draw their benefits during the first two weeks. Is there not some kind of compassionate gesture like this that the Conservative government could have made? We have had a bill to this effect for years—we did not begin asking for it just yesterday morning.
This possibility exists in the program developed by the coalition. Thousands of working people fought the deficit, more than any other group in society. The hon. members of this House got tax cuts. People who have jobs got tax cuts. But the unemployed, who created the $54 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund, did not get anything or any return on their investment. Was it so difficult to give them their benefits from the very start because they had been paying their contributions from the first hour they worked? That is the kind of initiative we would have liked to see from the Conservative government but did not find in its economic statement.
We also proposed a support plan for the manufacturing and forestry sectors. Everyone says we need to invest in innovation. We must invest in order to support the manufacturing and forestry sectors. I live in an area where the forestry industry is very important. It is facing a terrible crisis because there is almost no market left in the United States. Would it have been so difficult to have an action plan to increase exports to Europe? Would it have been so difficult to go ahead with a plan to provide better conditions and adequate retraining for the workers affected? No, instead it was decided to leave that sector to its own devices. That is the Prime Minister's ideology. He says we should not interfere with the economy; we should let it adjust itself. The fact that this affects real people does not matter. That is the approach taken by the current Prime Minister, and something that most members and most Canadians do not support.
We also asked that regional economic assistance be restored. Just as the economic crisis was setting in, the good minister at the time decided to cut funding to non-profit economic development organizations in Quebec. Talk about adding insult to injury. It meant telling people that, not only will we do nothing to help you, but we are going to take away the means that were already in place. It is understandable why people were so angry with the Conservative government that 80% of Quebeckers voted for other parties and the vast majority voted for the 49 Bloc members who are here today.
Then there was also restoration of the cultural assistance programs. A lesson can be learned from the cuts to those programs, unless one happens to be one of the ten or so Conservative members from Quebec. In Quebec, culture is more than a business or a market, it is an expression of what our nation is, of who Quebeckers are. If it is affected, the whole population is affected. Would it have been so hard for the Conservative government to admit that they got the message from the election and to restore that money? That would have made it possible to continue to promote culture outside Quebec and outside Canada, so that our authors, our creative people, our artists, can express themselves and have opportunities to make themselves known. There are no better ambassadors.
I recall the words of a Quebec comic during the campaign: pretty soon there would be no one representing Canada abroad except our troops. That was part of a public service message. Humorous messages are often the most effective.
It is all very well for us to have soldiers doing their jobs abroad, but there is no reason to cut the funding for cultural representatives.
So there are five situations that need to be remedied, but the Conservative government has not remedied them. One of these is compliance with the Kyoto agreement. For a long time, Quebec individuals, companies, aluminum smelters and the like have been expressing a desire to see the Kyoto protocol respected, because this is the best way to have sustainable development. They feel the Conservatives' approach is unacceptable.
They were not asking the Conservatives just to bow down and accept the complete protocol overnight, but progress could have been made toward this, and the intention to get on side with the global consensus could have been expressed. On this issue, now that the Americans have elected a new president, Canada is the only one out of step, but they see it as everybody being out of step except Canada. The rest of the world, which wants to improve the environmental situation and deal with climate change, must be wrong. Only the Prime Minister of Canada, who comes from Alberta, is right, and that is because the oil and gas industry has to be protected.
Last year, the government said it would cut corporate taxes according to a multi-year plan. The problem is that companies in the manufacturing and forestry sectors do not turn a profit. Therefore they do not benefit from tax cuts.
Consequently, certain programs were needed, such as programs to provide loan guarantees, assistance for innovation and purchases of new equipment. That is what we expected to hear from the government.
Therefore, we find ourselves in an extraordinary situation. An election was called to obtain a mandate to implement an economic action plan and then, after the election, the elected government decided to attack political parties, women and workers' rights rather than taking action to deal with the economic slowdown.
In my opinion, there can be no baser attitude in Parliament than to have put that statement on the table just when the economy was taking a nosedive. The economic statement should have dealt only with economic matters. They should have tried to help our workers, our regions, our citizens, to cope. But that was not what we found in the government's economic statement.
The economic statement met with a torrent of opposition. The government began backing down on a number of items but it did not seek to bring any resolution to the main issue of tabling an economic development plan. That is the issue for which the Conservative government has received the harshest condemnation. The government decided that it alone was on the right track, while all the other member countries of the G7 and G20 put forward, ideas, projects and concrete investments. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Here, the Conservative government is hiding behind the fact that it had already done what was required in the past. But the economic crisis is not a thing of the past; it is happening now and will carry forward into the future. Therefore, we need measures to deal with the situation and there are none.
As for the proposals made by the Bloc Québécois to the Minister of Finance, and that he applauded as being constructive, we would have expected to see some of them in the economic statement. We were not asking that all of these proposals be implemented. We could accept the fact that some of them would not be put forward, but we would have liked the government to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. However, it did not do that. What we have is this Reform Conservative—not Progressive Conservative—approach, which says that the government must do as little as possible regarding the economy, because ultimately that approach will produce good results.
I also wondered if this was not a way for the government to hide, to some degree, the current state of public finances. What is the true magnitude of what we will end up with at the end of the year? After all, the budget officer said that the decisions made by the Conservatives were responsible for the deficit that is anticipated this year, namely the GST cuts of one and then two points. Indeed, these measures deprive this government of a lot of leverage.
Lowering the GST may have helped sell more products made in China, but it also resulted in our manufacturing industries having fewer tools to compete and to provide competitive products. We can see why the opposition finds the economic statement unacceptable. This government was judged very harshly, particularly in Quebec.
I thank Quebeckers for listening to the Bloc's message and for not letting the Conservatives form a majority government. One can imagine what it would be like if we had had a Conservative majority government. The economic statement would have included even fewer initiatives to help the economy, but more measures to restrict freedoms.
In my opinion, Quebeckers did a service not only to Quebec, but to all of Canada by refusing to give that majority to the Conservatives. Today, if the government were not in a minority position, the opposition would be out in the streets. Women and workers would have had to take to the streets to protect their rights. Now, in this House, the opposition has stood up and said that it will not give its support to the government regarding its economic update. Canadians do not want an election tomorrow, but they want a government that will manage our finances and that will move forward with economic changes. This is what we are proposing, and this is in compliance with the parliamentary procedure.
I will conclude with this point: whether we are defending the interests of Quebeckers or promoting Quebec sovereignty, the Bloc Québécois honours its commitments. We have always said that when a bill or measure is good for Quebec, we will vote in favour of it. And if a measure is bad for Quebec, we will vote against it. That is still our policy in the current situation. We will not be part of the government, because we do not think that is the best solution. However, we decided to sign the agreement because we think that is the best solution for Quebec and for Canada as a whole. This notion is shared by the two other parties, which would form the government.
We have shown respect for Canada as a whole by not demanding that we be part of the government. The agreement bears this out. I hope we will be able to move forward as soon as possible with a government agenda that includes a plan for real change, a plan for development and economic intervention. The Conservative government will never be capable of producing such a plan as long as the current Prime Minister is in charge, since he does not believe in intervention, and not only because that it his belief, but also because of ideology and stubbornness. Quebeckers are fed up with that stubbornness. And so is the rest of Canada. This will never stop the Bloc Québécois from continuing to promote sovereignty.
We believe that the best solution for Quebec would be to have a sovereign state, a country where Quebeckers can make their own decisions in a parliament over which we have complete control, a parliament in Quebec City. Placing control in the hands of Quebeckers would eliminate the need for the measures we are forced to take here to ensure that Quebec's voice is heard in the federal Parliament and throughout Canada. That is why we maintain that the Bloc Québécois provides the best representation for Quebeckers in the federal Parliament. We are not, in any way, hindered by Canada-wide dynamics. We respect those who want to pursue that, but when it comes to protecting Quebec's interests, we forge ahead. We know that we are on the right path, and we respect the mandate we received from Quebeckers.
