Benoît Tremblay

[Supply, May 5th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I hope one day people like the hon. member for Calgary Centre will give up their ideological vision and understand the real economic situation in Canada and other countries.

The hon. member said that the military sector is fundamentally a high-tech industry, and we know full well that it will become less and less important in the years to come in North America, and even more so in the United States than here, in Canada. We should not forget that the American companies are our main competitors.

For many, many years, most of the federal research and development subsidies went to defence industries, in areas like telecommunications, development of new products or aeronautics. Governments used a good deal of their research and development subsidies for military purposes, because they wanted the armed forces to be in the vanguard of progress in aviation and telecommunications. Also, the development of new products was always crucial to the other two sectors. That is why the United States have a competitive edge in these sectors, where research and development is concerned. Now, of course, we must seek new ways of doing things. We are indeed in favour of the reduction in military production, but at the same time we must ensure that all of the research and the discoveries that can serve civilian purposes are not abandoned simply because some of these businesses go bankrupt tomorrow morning, after the government decides all of a sudden to cancel major contracts, like it just did with the helicopter deal.

For our country to be competitive at the international level, we need more than rhetoric; we cannot only tell the government never to interfere. We have to take into account the source of our competitiveness. Obviously, for years, the defence industry has been one of the main sources of our competitiveness in the non-military sector. The Americans set up a program for the conversion of defence industries to civilian production. They also developed alternative national strategies in areas like R and D, telecommunications, development of new products and aeronautics. They now have alternative strategies to replace the defence industry as instrument of R and D.

The Bloc Quebecois is only suggesting today that the government give us precisely what our competitors are getting. We can talk about being competitive at the international level and revel in rhetoric, but 80 per cent of our business, especially in the industrial sector, is with the United States. Thus, we need the tools, we need a transition process to maintain our competitiveness.

As you said it yourself, these businesses have already decided to go for the civilian market. We just have to get things moving toward conversion from defence to civilian production, since we must cut substantially our military spendings to reduce the government's budget and deficit. And this must be achieved without ever losing our competitiveness in the high tech sector. That sums up the precise and straightforward position of the Bloc Quebecois.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, the motion before the House today asks for more consultations, and today we may hear quite a few statements full of good resolutions in this respect.

I think we heard this in what was said by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre who is also a member of the finance committee and who said he wants more equity in the tax treatment of individuals and more equity among the provinces.

I would like to give two examples: one concerning individuals and one which concerns the provinces. Although the hon. member must be familiar with these examples, he did not mention them at all in his speech. However, it is now time to act.

As far as individuals are concerned, during the election campaign it was made clear that family trusts were a tax benefit that was unacceptable to most Canadians. However, there was nothing about this in the last budget. Maybe next fall the finance committee will consider the issue. We are still waiting for information from the Minister of Finance, and they tell us they will have the information but we are still waiting. If the committee starts considering the issue of family trusts next fall, this means there will be nothing in the next budget.

We must not forget that this measure was introduced by a Liberal government and extended by the Conservative govern-

ment at the end of its mandate, and now they are trying to play for time instead of dealing with this obvious injustice.

As far as provinces are concerned, the last example which contradicts what the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre just told us, refers to how the federal government treats Quebec tax credits for research and development. Quebec has introduced a tax system that benefits research and development, researchers and universities.

The system is simple: companies are allowed a tax credit of 20 per cent on research expenditures if they do the research alone and 40 per cent if they do the research in co-operation with a university. This is a very successful program. However, the federal government decided that the tax credit allowed by Quebec was to be considered as a subsidy, which was contrary to common practice. And it still is.

This means that the federal government imposes a 39 per cent tax on tax credits allowed companies and universities by the Government of Quebec. But not a word about this, although for years, the Quebec Minister of Finance has been asking for a review of this unacceptable tax treatment by the federal government.

Has anybody heard of any changes in this respect? Not at all, Madam Speaker. So if they want to be fair to the people and fair to the provinces, I wish the hon. member, who is a member of the finance committee, would respond to these two specific issues. It is time to act.

[Income Tax Act, April 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform our colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, that if his minister wants to move quickly to bring in a bill on firearms, he would find as much co-operation on this side as there was today. He may have some trouble with his own

party, but as far as we are concerned, we would be happy to co-operate fully.

[Excise Tax Act, April 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with what the parliamentary secretary just told us, but the co-operation he received from the Bloc Quebecois shows that we are always ready to co-operate on sensible and useful bills. It is a very small step in the right direction and I think he could use what we just did as a model to tackle real problems such as the

overall review of government spending and the entire federal bureaucracy. We would be more than willing to co-operate.

[Supply, March 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciated my colleague's speech and the enthusiasm and determination she showed in talking about the Youth Service. She said that, thanks to that program, young people will have the opportunity to get off unemployment insurance. We must understand however that, given the recent unemployment insurance reform, they will not go from unemployment to that program since they will no longer be eligible for UI benefits.

If the prospects presented in that famous red book are so extraordinary, please tell us why, after just a few months, the Prime Minister got such a bad reception in the Maritimes and in Shawinigan? What is perfectly clear for Canadians is that the government made promises and that we are now being presented with some well-intentioned measures that are totally out of proportion with the real problems of our society and the extent of those problems. The government promised us heaven on earth.

Just remember what happened when Ms. Campbell said, during a debate, that the unemployment rate would stand at 9 per cent at the end of the century. She was treated like a pariah. Well, I suggest you read our Minister of Finance's budget. What does it say the rate will be in 1996 and in 1997? What are the medium-term projections for the unemployment rate? We will know in August.

The reality is that we are facing problems of a massive scale, the Liberal Party made irresponsible promises and now it is unable to abide by them.

I believe the last campaign was totally irresponsible as concerns public finance; the idea was it would not be necessary to cut government expenditures, all that was needed was job creation. Now we see major cuts, particularly in social programs, and we get some small measures totally out of proportion with the problems; that is why people are so disappointed.

I understand that a program of such a scale as the one announced could be reasonable for a village or a small region.

It is totally ridiculous to talk of investing $25 million in venture capital for small business. We would end up with about $60 per business for the whole of Canada. Twenty-five million, fantastic! It would make more sense if we gave this amount to a region in particular, to a small group of credit unions in the south-western part of Montreal for instance. An amount of $25 million in venture capital for small business all over Canada can only excite the imagination. But it has absolutely nothing to do with reality. The problem is there are more than a million small businesses in Canada. In the long term, the program is said to amount to $200 million, but in the short term, it is $25 million a year or $25 per small business. It is totally absurd.

The solutions you propose are out of proportion with the sheer scale of the problem. Throughout the campaign, the government described a situation becoming progressively easier. We now notice that it is rapidly deteriorating and, what is worse, that interest rates are affected more and more. Could the member explain to what extent the measures she mentioned are geared to the problems?

[Business Of Supply, March 17th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I can only applaud what was said by the hon. member for Halifax, especially her concluding remarks on the issue of gun control. As you know, following certain tragic events, a committee was asked to make a thorough review of this question, but the result was a bill that was a compromise, both in substance and form, since in most cases any action that may be taken will be based on regulations that have yet to be approved by Cabinet or the government. At the time, the minister was able to get a bill through Parliament that could be seen as a major step forward but left the government with considerable discretion in drafting regulations, unlike the previous legislation, and this, we felt, was a major shortcoming.

Not surprisingly, we now have regulations that are largely unsatisfactory. For instance, so-called semi-automatic weapons, which are practically assault weapons, are still sold across Canada. The weapon used at the Polytechnique can still be purchased as a hunting weapon.

I know the Minister of Justice intends to take action. I simply want to point out that he can act very quickly on many aspects of gun control through the regulations, without having to go through the legislative process.

I may add that we would welcome improvements to the legislation itself, especially with respect to the registration of firearms. In the course of our consultations, I met many hunters and groups of hunters who had no objection to firearms registration. And contrary to what was said at the time, especially with respect to the cost, since we register cars and a number of other products, it would not be very difficult to use our current system to register firearms. We both encourage and request the government to act.

Would the hon. member for Halifax support us in our endeavour to get the government to speed up the passage of firearms legislation, perhaps even before the Act comes into effect?

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

I appreciate your great kindness, Mr. Speaker. If I may, I would like to ask my hon. friend from Frontenac, who is the Bloc Quebecois critic for the environment, to tell us what this budget means for the environment.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

I can say that after listening to the Minister of Transport, there is one point on which I agree: if our current railway network corresponds to the national dream, that dream is pretty obsolete.

After listening to his speech, I concluded that the Minister of Transport had become a subsidiary of Treasury Board, because he told us basically that we had to cut costs and raise fares. I expected some vision of the future.

He told us that if there was a merger between CN and CP, they would examine it. But why does the minister not make a merger mandatory and provide clear guidelines on maintaining essential services, cutting costs and making railway services competitive?

Why is the minister waiting for CN and CP to come up with proposals, when today we are told this will take at least another year. Meanwhile, they will sell off assets. A lot of this property is on railway lines, and major assets will be transferred to real estate subsidiaries of these companies. These assets are now worth a lot of money and were probably acquired for a song, with government assistance.

There is another matter that is even more important for the future of this country, and the Minister of Transport did not even bother to mention it. The high-speed train project for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, a project for the future, a project based on new technologies that will be able to meet both transportation requirements of a billion dollar North American market for new technologies, and would you believe, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport did not say a word about this project?

Could the Minister of Transport perhaps give us some idea of what the prospects are for the future?

[The Budget, February 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when one has a little parliamentary experience and hears a minister make, in reply to the budget speech or as a follow-up to the budget speech, the kind of partisan remarks the Minister for Human Resources Development just made, you can be sure that he is hiding something.

He spent half of his speech blaming the opposition. Yet, he is the one who ran an entire election campaign on job creation. The truth is plain and simple and, if it was easy to speak the truth, then the minister could speak it calmly. Canadians would understand.

Why does the minister have to make such a fuss, raise his voice and make accusations? The reason is simple. I cannot say that he is lying, of course, but I can say that he is not telling the whole truth. The truth of the matter is quite simple. They are making $5.5 billion worth of cuts on the backs of the unemployed, cutting $2.5 billion in social assistance and there is no telling what is going to happen two years from now to post-secondary education, I mean federal transfer payments to the provinces in that area, but one thing is sure, we can expect cuts. We do not have the individual amounts for social assistance and post-secondary education, but the combined amount is in the budget.

The minister talks about job creation. He did so during the entire campaign. Yet, in January, the government decided to collect an extra $800 million in UI premiums. And now, it is telling us that in 1995 it is going to reduce the premium rate and roll it back to its previous level. That will happen next year.

The loss of 40,000 jobs has just been announced, and we will have more jobs in 1995. Of course, this is making the unemployment situation worse, so benefits have to be cut. Everyone can see that you are cutting benefits. Everyone can see that you are getting ready to cut social assistance. That is clear from your budget.

It apparently contains measures for businesses. As we said before, Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General of Canada clearly demonstrated that Canadian corporations were hiding millions of dollars in international tax havens. Yet, there is only one tiny little measure with regard to banks and insurance companies in this budget, and it will not be implemented before November 1995.

In the Globe and Mail this morning banks were reported as saying: ``We did not get an answer yet. We are waiting. It is only for 1995, anyway''. Basically, what they mean is that things can change between now and then. Cuts on the other hand take effect immediately.

I would ask the minister to calmly tell us the truth on this. He does not need to shout if he wants to get his message across to the Canadian people. Neither does he need to accuse the opposition. If he has positive steps to introduce, we are prepared to listen.

[Petitions, February 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour this morning of presenting a petition signed by close to 300 residents of my riding of Rosemont. They call on the government to reinstate budgets for social and co-operative housing and denounce the federal government's plans to increase subsidized rents by 20 per cent.

In the riding of Rosemont alone, more than 1,000 families are on the waiting list for social housing whereas all budgets have been frozen.

As you undoubtedly know, Mr. Speaker, the Régie du logement du Québec, taking into account overall housing costs, has authorized the private sector to increase rents by only .5 per cent to 1.1 per cent this year. It would be ridiculous if the public

sector, which has a responsibility to protect the least fortunate, were to authorize rent increases of 20 per cent.

With the budget only several hours away, my constituents in the riding of Rosemont call upon the Minister of Finance to uphold the commitments he made during the last election campaign. It is vital that he dispel any uncertainty weighing on the least fortunate and that he restore decent funding for the construction of new social housing units.