Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to address the opposition motion tabled by my colleague, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean, that this House censure any action by the federal government in the area of education, such as the introduction of the Millennium Scholarships program or national testing.
After all these years, it is deplorable to have to rise in the House to once again remind the government of the consensus among Quebec's stakeholders in the education sector, under the current and past provincial governments, which has served as the basis for what is now called Quebec's traditional demands in the education sector.
I rise today because this government, in its last budget, is getting involved in education, in an area that is under Quebec's jurisdiction.
I rise today because the Liberal Party is proposing to introduce national standards in education.
I also rise today because the federal government is proposing to young Quebeckers solutions that are increasingly centralizing and that are far from addressing their concerns.
I remind you that there is a consensus among all political parties at the Quebec National Assembly, to the effect that the federal government must respect Quebec's jurisdiction over education. Even the former leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Daniel Johnson—whose job may be taken over by the current Conservative Party leader—recently expressed his disappointment at the announcement of the millennium scholarship program. On February 24, he said “I would have preferred to see Quebec's jurisdiction and that of the other provinces respected”.
In addition to being an unspeakable intrusion in an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction, the millennium fund is far from meeting the needs of young Quebeckers.
Allow me to point out some flaws regarding this $2.5 billion fund. The interest on this fund will be used to grant some 100,000 scholarships, of an average amount of $3,000, to low and middle income students who will have satisfied a criterion based on merit.
The first problem is the criteria relating to income and merit. The government should know that students from wealthy families do better, partly because they do not have to worry about finding money to continue their education. It should come as no surprise if scholarships are not awarded in accordance with the initial objective of helping low income students.
This is the reason behind this statement of the Fédération des étudiants et étudiantes universitaires du Québec: “If the federal government intends to give scholarships on the basis of merit or excellence, we can only disapprove. Linking the subsistence of underprivileged students to their academic performance flows from an ideology we cannot endorse”.
There is another fly in the ointment. The millennium fund is being created at a time when the privatization of universities is being discussed more and more. Underlying these privatization suggestions is a strong movement that is putting into question the democratization of higher education.
I would be remiss if I did not deal today with a problem that is getting bigger and bigger in this country that is desperately looking for its own identity. We are witnessing a quest for a Canadian nation at all cost. The notion of two founding peoples has now been excised from federalist utterances.
In the same vein, these staunch proponents of federalism refuse to give any status to aboriginal peoples who have already been recognized as nations in Quebec since the mid-1980s.
Like my colleagues have done, I have taken you through what I call the millennium blunders, and I would like to deal now with national standards in education.
Since 1867, Quebeckers are in a political straitjacket and a system they never had an opportunity to vote on. We are living ever since in a political entity that is ruled by a constitution of another age that was made with different goals in mind.
If we review briefly the main elements of what Quebeckers considered a pact at the time and which is becoming a straitjacket, we notice that the four initial provinces got exclusive power over health care and education. Obviously, this was not done out of any great concern for decentralization, quite the opposite.
The provinces were given responsibility for jurisdictions already occupied by civil society or by the various religious communities, which looked after both education and health services.
Things started to change in the early 1960s I guess. In a very short time, the quiet revolution and the numerous ensuing reforms radically changed the face of education. We went from a denominational system operated by protestant or catholic religious communities to a network of educational institutions established by the government for the stated purpose of improving democracy in education.
I take this brief look back in history today to show that, in Quebec, education is an integral part of our history and our identity as well. This prerogative has always been a provincial jurisdiction, which means that elected members of the Quebec National Assembly have been able to fashion our education system to fulfil the aspirations of their fellow citizens.
Recently, this consensus has fallen into oblivion. We are dealing with a government that does not understand the meaning of traditional demands. According to the morning papers, there is not such thing as traditional demands. Is there such a thing as education? We do not know yet. What we do know is that this government has once again altered the meaning of this expression to directly invade a provincial jurisdiction. In the federal government, education no longer means education, but opportunity.
What opportunity are we talking about here? The opportunity to sign cheques printed with the maple leaf logo for the purpose of scoring political points of course. That is what we were told by a Prime Minister, who was apparently oblivious to the fact he was not making this statement to his pals in his living room but on television in the House of Commons.
This government does not have a monopoly on this centralizing vision of Canada. It is shared by many members of this House. That is why the role played by the Bloc Quebecois is so important.
These people cannot live in a beautiful imaginary Canada united by wonderful national standards any more. These national standards, so heavily criticized in Quebec, were one of the election planks of the member for Sherbrooke, who travelled across his beautiful country to promote them. Why not? This is a very popular theme in the rest of Canada.
The provinces have different levels of education. Not all provincial governments invest equally in education, and the federal government, forgetting about Quebec, may legitimately propose national educational standards to solve that problem.
This is what the hon. member for Sherbrooke did in the election platform that bears his name. He sacrificed Quebec in order to win Canadians over. He forgot about Quebec in order to serve his own interests. Avoiding any hasty judgments on his highly likely running for the leadership of the Quebec Liberal Party, as rumour would have it, let us review the ideas contained in the platform which bears the name “the Jean Charest plan for Canada in the 21st century”.
The following objectives are set out on page 31 of the document. If the party of the hon. member for Sherbrooke is elected, the federal government will pursue “the highest standard in our schools”, “top ten placement in Math and Sciences”, “better accessibility to university” and “better transition from schools to the work force”.
Now we must ask the hon. member for Sherbrooke if the word “schools” in his vocabulary is connected with “education”. And during the next campaign, we will also have to ask him whether he considers university to be part of the Quebec education system.
As for his action plan's reference to the transition between school and work, we need to find out whether this is part of manpower training or of education. If the transition is part of manpower training, the hon. member for Sherbrooke is 30 years behind the times in his knowledge of the Quebec system.
If it is an education issue, along with academic excellence and university, he is more than 125 years behind the times, and would be well advised to reread the constitution before he sets foot in any assembly of the Quebec Liberal Party.
Having referred to the general objectives of the Leader of the Conservative Party, let us now go into greater detail. I will now read a quote that particularly surprised me. On page 33 of the Plan, he says:
A Jean Charest Government will help ensure that all Canadian youth receive the basic knowledge and skills they need for their futures by instituting a Canadian Education Excellence Fund.
Again, the last words are “a Canadian Education Excellence Fund”. We wondered where the Prime Minister got the idea of a millennium scholarship fund. Now we know. He read the platform of the member for Sherbrooke and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.
What will this fund be used for? Listen to this: it will provide “matching funds to provinces and territories that participate in establishing interprovincial standards for Common Curricula”. Yes, interprovincial standards and common curricula in education. This excerpt clearly shows that the provinces that will not take part in this beautiful Canada-wide program will simply not be eligible and will not get anything.
In short, the Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister, and the Conservative Party leader have the same objective: to compel and to force Quebec to fit in the Canadian mould. The member for Sherbrooke wants exactly the same thing as the leader opposite, but he refrains from saying so to Quebeckers.
I will conclude by saying—
