House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was quebec.

Last in Parliament March 2011, as Bloc MP for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (Québec)

Lost his last election, in 2011, with 33% of the vote.

quebecgreenhouse gas emissionsclimate changekyoto protocolfederalenvironmental assessmentbloc quebecoisenvironment and sustainableoiltargetsinternationalplanspecies at riskdevelopmentapproachenergyreductionindustryprovincesquebec'sagreementprotectionprinciplechairmanreduce1990setobjectivescertaincountriesregulationseconomicthereforeexchangemontrealconventionratherjurisdictionnuclearmeasuresgovernment'samendmentsdecided

Statements in the House

Social Housing February 3rd, 1999

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to greet the people of Rosemont and Petite Patrie who have come to Ottawa today to deliver a clear message.

Under the pretext of returning the responsibility for social housing to the provinces, the federal government has dissociated itself completely from this program, by cutting its funding. The federal government has made an offer to the Government of Quebec to hand the existing housing stock over to it, an offer that is totally unacceptable.

The federal government has no trouble finding the millions necessary for promoting the maple leaf, and the struggle with the deficit has not prevented it from spending over $40 million in all manner of propaganda.

The federal government needs to come back to the bargaining table with a better offer, because in our affluent society it is unacceptable that the number of families having to spend over half their income just to put a roof over their heads is constantly on the rise.

Division No. 298 December 3rd, 1998

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to speak to Bill C-43, which creates the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency. This Liberal bill is not new. The government first mentioned it in the throne speech in February 1996.

At the time, like today, the Bloc Quebecois strongly rejected this bill, which we deemed centralizing.

Allow me to explain to you some of the reasons behind our opposition to this Liberal initiative. First, this institution will become a superstructure, a super tax collection institution, which will enable Ottawa to extend its influence to all levels of government.

We already know that this agency sprung from the imagination of senior tax officials in Ottawa. They would really like to control a gigantic fiscal octopus extending its tentacles beyond the provinces to municipal and local administrations.

Their intent is to administer everything from provincial sales taxes to gasoline and alcohol taxes. We should ask ourselves “Do Quebeckers and Canadians want to give such power to a single government agency?” The answer, as you will agree, is no.

We oppose the creation of this agency because the government's obligation to account to the public and to Parliament will be weakened. In its present form, Revenue Canada is responsible to taxpayers through the Department of National Revenue. So at the moment, the government cannot evade difficult questions, such as the family trusts scandal, for example.

However, the new agency would not be subject to the direct control of the House of Commons and would therefore face less rigorous parliamentary scrutiny. Once again, do Canadians and Quebeckers want to have an agency that the government can use as a cover? The answer is no.

This answer becomes even clearer when one is familiar with the Liberal approach to management: they constantly hide behind inquiries and independent agencies to avoid answering embarrassing questions. That is how they reacted to the questions raised concerning the involvement of senior military officers in the Somalia affair. That is also how they reacted to questions on air safety. They reacted the same way with respect to food inspection.

This morning, in the Standing Committee on Health, we heard the assistant to the auditor general and the president of the food inspection agency, another independent agency established recently, which is similar to the one contemplated by the government in Bill C-43: the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

I urge hon. members to read the section of the auditor general's report dealing with how this transition was handled. When I toured Quebec over the summer, I visited a distribution centre, an income tax return processing centre in the riding of my colleague from Jonquière. I met more than 500 public service employees. All of them cautioned us about two things. The first one is the infamous pay equity issue. I will not bring it up again, because it has already been the subject of extensive debate in this House.

The second point raised by public service employees, residents and voters from the riding of my colleague, the hon. member for Jonquière, is their concern about the agency that will be established under Bill C-43.

Let me go back to this morning's meeting of the standing committee on health. The auditor general once again showed that the transition from the Department of Health to a food inspection agency had generated major distortions. I will not draw a parallel, but allow me to voice my concerns about Bill C-43, which will establish a similar independent agency. I believe there is cause for concern.

My colleague, the Bloc Quebecois critic on this issue and member for Saint-Eustache, expressed concern about it. It is important to take note of that concern.

The government continued in the same vein to avoid having to deal with the Prime Minister's involvement in police violence against students at the Vancouver APEC summit. We refuse to give the Liberal government another excuse to take cover and avoid answering the public's questions in an area as important as the collection of taxes.

The Canada customs and revenue agency could also be prejudicial to people's privacy. As members know, we live in a world where computer technology is becoming increasingly important, and where private sector organizations buy and sell more and more personal information. The federal government has already dealt with the sensitive issue of protecting personal information in Bill C-54.

My colleague from Chambly will be speaking soon. I remember his comments about the concerns raised by Bill C-54. The Liberal government is consistent. It is so uncomfortable with the principle of protecting personal information, that it even attempted to downplay this objective in the title of a bill that is supposed to do just that.

Bill C-54 is entitled an act to support and promote electronic commerce—“support”, “promote” and “commerce” are the three key words—by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances.

It is obvious that, with this bill, the Liberal government is giving priority to commerce over the protection of personal information. We now fear that it may be pursuing the same objective with this agency, that is to maximize government revenues, without regard for the protection of personal information.

So, the government is consistent, in Bill C-54 and Bill C-43. How can we confidently hand over so much personal information to a super-powerful federal agency, when it was designed by a Liberal government that will not give priority to the protection of personal information over the promotion of unfettered commerce?

The answer is obvious. Canadians and Quebeckers cannot trust such an institution. We have serious concerns about the balance of powers that will prevail within the new federal agency.

Who, exactly, will decide? In the end, who will be accountable? These are questions we have.

I conclude by saying that if the federal government truly wants to improve the administration of tax laws and streamline their application, the solution is simple: Quebec already has a revenue department that does a good job of collecting taxes. The federal government should simply, once and for all, hand over to Revenue Quebec the responsibility for collecting all taxes in Quebec, and it should do the same with all the other provinces that want to do so.

Such decentralization would give some credence to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who claimed again yesterday that the Canadian federation was open and decentralized.

Youth Programs November 20th, 1998

Mr. Speaker, it is not the PQ branch that came here this morning to say that the youth strategy is not working. It is the consensus among young people and the minister should realize that.

Instead of trying to convince himself that everything is fine, could the minister give us just one good reason to keep youth training programs under federal jurisdiction, considering that he has already transferred the general manpower training programs, and that he himself said this was a better solution?

How come what is good for workers in general is not good for young Quebeckers?

Youth Programs November 20th, 1998

Mr. Speaker, this morning a coalition representing various groups of young people came here to ask the federal government to transfer to Quebec all the money earmarked for youth programs.

Since this request is very much along the same lines as Quebec's traditional demands and is the logical extension of the transfer of manpower training, does the minister intend to give it a favourable reply?

Supply November 19th, 1998

Madam Speaker, I am very happy my colleague mentioned that the Prime Minister said recently that cuts to the provinces were the price to pay for a balanced budget.

Just to show how this government contradicts itself, I will quote what the Prime Minister said during the election campaign in 1993: “In our platform there are no plans to cut payments to individuals or to the provinces”. This is rather clear. It is in writing. These are the Prime Minister's own words.

Then he said cuts to the provinces were the way to a balanced budget. How contradictory!

Supply November 19th, 1998

Madam Speaker, it is pretty easy to explain. If the parliamentary secretary cannot understand, he surely must have a hard time managing his own personal budget.

It is quite simple: when a government has its tax base cut and ends up with less revenue, it can deliver fewer services. The fact is that the transfer payments to the provinces for health, education and welfare have been reduced by $6.3 billion. The Quebec government has seen its financial margin, its financial capacity, reduced and the Liberal Party, of which the parliamentary secretary is a member, is to blame for this.

Supply November 19th, 1998

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the new member for Sherbrooke, who won a victory we are very proud of.

I am happy to rise to speak to the motion we put forward this morning. Our demand is clear. We are demanding, on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, that the federal government pay back the amounts it has cut from the transfer payments for health, education and social assistance. We are requesting that the House of Commons, and I quote from the motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois:

—endorses the provincial consensus reached in Saskatoon on August 7, 1998, that the federal government must restore, via the existing provisions of the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST), its contributions to front-line health-care services, starting with a payment of at least $2 billion, given that the federal government has already recorded an accumulated surplus of $10.4 billion for the first six months of the 1998-99 fiscal year.

In fact, since 1994, the Liberal government has cut $6.3 billion from transfer payments to the provinces for health, education and social assistance. Quebec's portion of these cuts amounts to $1.8 billion, including $1 billion for health only. What does this $1 billion represent annually? Wait till you hear this, because the list may be a long one.

This amount stolen by the federal government represents, in Quebec alone, 20% of the cost of running all the hospitals in Quebec and the c1osure of half the hospitals in the Montreal region. I come from a Montreal riding and I can talk about it for a long time. This amount represents the cost of caring for 370,000 in-patients, the salaries of half the nurses in Quebec, the cost of running all local community service centres and twice the cost of all youth services.

Yet, the Prime Minister said, during the 1993 election campaign, and I quote:

Our program does not include any plan to cut payments to individuals or provinces, it is clear and it is in writing.

Once elected, the Prime Minister did not hesitate to break his promise. By merging all transfer payments to the provinces into the Canada health and social transfer, the government cut transfers and shifted to the provinces, including Quebec, the cost of the fiscal restraint policy.

It is unacceptable for the federal government to use the fact that the provinces decide how to allocate the money as a smoke screen to hide the damage done by its own decisions. Had it not changed the system and introduced the Canada health and social transfer, the Liberal government would have had more explaining to do with respect to the cuts in health care, especially since it reduced cash transfers for social services to their level of 15 years ago. Total transfers currently amount to $12.5 billion, which is a far cry from the $18.8 billion in 1993, when the Liberals were first elected.

My words are not too strong. It is unacceptable for the federal government to cut transfer payments unilaterally by 33% in less that four years. If you take into account the increase in population and cost of living, social transfers have never been that low in decades. In 1998, we have social transfers which are 45% lower than their record level of 1985 and 43% lower than their 1994 level.

Thus, within only one term, the Liberal government has virtually cut in half the federal contribution to health care and then it brags it has eliminated the deficit. The truth is it has not eliminated the deficit, it has transferred the debt to the provinces and to the sick who are affected by these cuts.

Besides, while cutting billions of dollars in provincial transfers for health and social programs, the federal Liberals never stopped interfering in the health sector, and in a heavy handed manner.

First, I will mention Bill C-14 on drinking water, that infringes upon health, natural resources and the environment, three exclusive Quebec jurisdictions. Moreover, this bill provides for national standards on the quality of drinking water, which is also a provincial responsibility.

That is not all. The Liberal government has proposed an overall policy on the management of new reproduction technologies. Once again, the federal government is interfering in provincial jurisdictions.

As for health programs, for home care, the Liberal government refuses to give the provinces the right to opt out with full financial compensation. On this issue, we see a replay of the millennium scholarship project. I want to remind the House that this is a $2.5 billion fund aimed at providing students with 100,000 scholarships of $3,000 each, based on merit.

I also want to remind the House of the consensus on this issue in Quebec. Since 1964, Quebec has used its right to opt out with full compensation. Quebec set up a financial assistance system for students in 1964. This is what we used the opting out with full compensation provision for. Our financial assistance system might not be the best in the world, but at least Quebec students graduate with half the debt load of their counterparts in the rest of Canada. This is exemplary. This is what one uses opting-out with full compensation for: to let the provinces run services they can manage better than the federal government.

That is not all. In its 1997 budget, the federal government announced a $150 million three year fund for health services adjustment to help provinces set up pilot projects to provide home care or pharmacare, when Quebec already had its own programs.

The Constitution prevents the Liberal government from opening federal CLSCs in Quebec. This is fortunate, because the federal government provides services through the back door, as it is doing now in education with the millennium scholarships.

Moreover the health minister is going to spend $50 million over three years to set up a national health information system and $100 million over three years to improve two existing programs, the community action program for children and the Canada prenatal nutrition program. Is it not ironic for the government to find millions of dollars to enhance its visibility when it refuses to reimburse the provinces for the shameful cuts they had to endure.

On September 7, 1998, the Minister of Health mentioned in his speech before the Canadian Medical Association that he wants to create a national report card on the health care system to assess, each year, the quality of health care in Canada. Once again, the minister seems to be forgetting that health care is a provincial responsibility and, therefore, the provinces are in a better position to know what the health care situation is in their respective jurisdictions.

In conclusion, we urge the minister to say right now that he will not use this annual report card to penalize those provinces that do not want anything to do with it. But, for the Minister of Health, anything is a good excuse not to give the provinces their money back.

That is why the Bloc Quebecois is fighting to help Quebec recover the money that was cut from its transfer payments and will continue to fight until Quebec is treated fairly.

Canada Student Loans November 5th, 1998

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the motion of the hon. member for Vancouver East. This motion deals with a very important issue, that is access to post-secondary education. I will read the motion before explaining the Bloc Quebecois' position. Motion M-132 reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should reverse the privatisation of Canada Student Loans, reject proposals for income contingent loan repayment, and should instead implement a federal student grant program and establish accessibility as a new national standard for post-secondary education.

Let me say from the outset that we oppose this motion because it is clearly based on a centralizing will, in an area that comes under the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces under the Canadian Constitution.

We are not of course opposed to investments in education, but it is not the federal government's role to get involved in this area. Indeed, beyond the Constitution itself, we have always defended Quebec's education system, which clearly differs from those that exist elsewhere in Canada.

The Quebec model has been successful, and it is to protect it from a centralizing federal program that, this morning, I tabled a bill to make changes to the millennium scholarship foundation. If that bill is passed, it will allow Quebec, and the other Canadian provinces interested, to opt out of the foundation's activities, with full financial compensation. It would be possible for a province to opt out, provided there already exists in that province a program aimed at providing financial assistance to students in order to promote equity in access to post-secondary education.

I will not read the bill in detail here, but I will invite anyone in the rest of Canada who would like to see national education standards to do so, for it is a faithful reflection of the consensus in Quebec. That consensus will manifest itself each time the federal government tries to interfere in education in Quebec.

For a clear understanding of the difference between Quebec and the Canadian provinces, I need to provide a brief description of how we have tried to guarantee equality of opportunity for access to post-secondary education.

Quebec already has a program for providing financial assistance to students. This would enable it to meet the conditions for withdrawal with full compensation, as defined in the bill I have made public this morning.

This comprehensive system was not created yesterday. After the Quiet Revolution, the Government of Quebec created a loan and bursary program aimed at promoting equal opportunity. It is the only government in Canada to have developed such a system, and to offer student assistance based on need, not merit.

Year after year, the Government of Quebec assumes approximately 80% of the costs of this program. The rest, a marginal amount, comes from the federal program Quebec opted out of in 1964 with full compensation.

We have to assume that Mr. Pearson, the Canadian Prime Minister of the time, reached such a good understanding with Mr. Lesage, the Premier of Quebec, because he had read the Canadian Constitution, which provides clearly that education comes under Quebec's jurisdiction.

I introduced a bill this morning to remedy the problem created by the Liberal government. By insisting on setting up this millennium scholarship fund the Prime Minister precipitated a dispute with the National Assembly in a field where the separation of powers is very clear. Because of this, it managed to turn all—and I stress that—parties in the National Assembly against its proposal. All parties in the National Assembly, including the Liberal Party of Quebec, are opposed to it.

He succeeded in uniting all the stakeholders in education in Quebec in opposition to him. Whether we are talking about university rectors, professors or students, the world of education opposed with a single voice the meddling by the federal government in the field of education.

In this context, I must reject today's motion, which would engender the same problems as the millennium fund scholarships and apply uniformly across Canada—in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

At the risk of repeating myself, I reiterate that the people in education in Quebec want to retain the ability to fashion their own future according to the choices made by Quebec society. My action this morning is intended to fight this same sort of meddling by the federal government. It aims to have Quebec's consensus on the matter respected.

This consensus is not surprising. Where education is concerned, Quebec has its own developmental tools. It has had promising results as far as accessibility is concerned. Tuition fees in Quebec are twice as low as in the rest of Canada. The average student debt load is estimated to be $11,000 per student, compared to more than $25,000 in the rest of Canada. We in Quebec can boast as well of having the highest proportion of university undergraduates in terms of our population.

In other words, we know how to manage education. We do not need new national standards or a new campaign to increase the federal government's profile.

There is too little money available for education to take any of it for artificial country-wide standards, or to buy the Prime Minister publicity, which is the main purpose of the millennium scholarship foundation.

Looking at recent federal initiatives in education and assistance to youth, it is obvious that raising the Liberal government's profile is more important than students' real needs. That is particularly clear in the case of the millennium scholarships.

The Prime Minister is prepared to totally duplicate a government structure that is already working perfectly well. The motion is aimed in exactly the same direction as the millennium scholarship foundation.

For example, the Government of Quebec has already accredited all educational institutions within its borders. It has already put into place a system which selects students based on need and not on merit, systems for auditing records and distributing assistance, an appeal process, and so on. This structure has been in place in Quebec for a long time now, and works very well.

My bill urges the federal government to transfer financial assistance directly to Quebec's students through Quebec's existing system, consistent with the wishes of the elected representatives of the National Assembly. It is a system that is based not only on the needs and on the societal choices of the PQ government, but that reflects the wishes of all parties in the National Assembly.

I wish to point out that the money in the millennium scholarships fund properly belongs to Quebec and to the provinces who wish to opt out of the program. The money the federal government is putting into the foundation comes from cuts to transfer payments intended for Quebec and the provinces.

In Quebec alone, federal government payments to the education sector have been cut by $500 million annually. It is not surprising that Canadian provinces and Quebec are demanding that the federal government resume transfer payments before creating any new programs. Nor is it surprising that Quebec's education sector is condemning the government for giving $75 million in millennium scholarships with one hand, while removing an amount six times greater from the education budget with the other.

I have not addressed the issue of privatization of student loans, or of proposals for income contingent loan repayment. The reason is very simple: these measures do not apply to Quebec which, as I explained, has designed its own system of financial aid for students.

I therefore urge all those interested in education to study this system, which has nothing to do with privatization or income contingent loan repayment.

Millennium Scholarships November 5th, 1998

Mr. Speaker, what the Quebec students want is scholarships based on need, not scholarships based on merit. That is what they want.

Even certain members of cabinet are not doing a very good job at disguising their desire to respect the wishes of the Quebec coalition and to allow Quebec to withdraw from the millennium scholarship program, receive its financial share, and use it according to its priorities.

Why is the Minister of Human Resources Development still obstinately rejecting the Quebec consensus on this matter?

Millennium Scholarships November 5th, 1998

Mr. Speaker, today the Fédération des étudiants universitaires du Québec has come to Ottawa to support the Bloc Quebecois's initiative of introducing a bill on opting out of the millennium scholarship plan with full compensation.

Does the Minister of Human Resources Development intend to support this initiative and thus comply with the wishes of the Quebec students, who do not want anything to do with the millennium scholarship program?