Gilles Duceppe

[Taxation, October 27th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Premier of Quebec and most of the provincial and territorial premiers have said they are disappointed with the results of the federal-provincial conference and are having trouble understanding the Prime Minister's stubborn refusal to satisfy their claims, while the federal government is knee-deep in surpluses.

When the surplus in Ottawa for the current fiscal year is expected to be between $10 billion and $12 billion, how can the Prime Minister justify his intransigence toward Quebec and the provinces that will not be receiving anything more than what was offered to them at the health conference?

[Petro-Canada, October 21st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, history will conclude that Quebec's most important financial institution was overlooked in the single most successful transaction ever to take place in the western world.

We are told about “objective” criteria. However, the president of Valeurs Mobilières Desjardins learned from a finance department official that only the first three firms were retained on the basis of so-called objective criteria. The other 19 firms were selected after a turn was taken around the table, where names being suggested.

We want to know what these criteria were and, particularly, which procedure is more objective: to go around the table starting from the left or the right?

[Petro-Canada, October 21st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, despite the representations made by Desjardins to be involved in the sale of Petro-Canada shares, the Quebec firm was ignored. Yesterday, the Prime Minister tried to explain this oversight—as he calls it—by saying that it was outside consultants who told the Department of Finance which firms should be retained for that operation.

Are we to conclude that it is on the basis of the recommendations of these outside consultants that the Department of Finance ignored Quebec's most important financial institution? Who had the last word in the selection of the firms: the Minister of Finance or the so-called experts?

[Petro-Canada, October 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it might also be interesting if the federal government were to recognize that movement when it is time to do business, and not just pay lip service to it. When the Minister of Finance has the nerve to call this transaction one of the “single most successful transactions of its kind in the last decade in the western world”, I would like to remind him that Quebec is also a part of the western world.

It is the best vehicle for selling shares in Quebec, and Quebeckers have been excluded from buying Petro-Canada. That is what was done, the same way André Ouellet tried to use Bill S-31 to prevent Quebec from buying shares in Canadian Pacific. That is what happened.

[Petro-Canada, October 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance can say what he likes about following objective criteria, it is still true that Desjardins Securities was excluded from the sale of Petro-Canada shares in a cavalier fashion.

If the federal government acted as properly as the finance minister claims, why did the Prime Minister tell Alban D'Amours, president of the Desjardins Group, that he was sorry, if, indeed, the federal government did all it was supposed to?

[Air Canada, October 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very welcome change, because the former Minister of Transport, now the House leader, told us there was no need to change the law when we submitted the same structures to him as has just seen the current minister.

When we talk about changing the law, do we mean Air Canada and all its subsidiaries providing service in French, and not only that, but also keeping the headquarters as it is, with the maintenance services and the 2,000 jobs in Montreal? We mean the whole package, not just a part.

[Air Canada, October 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, prior to the election, when the Bloc Québécois called upon the government to take action to ensure that Air Canada, when restructured, would continue to provide services in French, the Liberals replied in the House that there was no need to amend the legislation. The Commissioner of Official Languages still has had no guarantee from Transport Canada and she told us so today.

Since these are real worries, is the government going to enact a law to ensure that the new Air Canada and all its subsidiaries will be subject to the Official Languages Act as Dyane Adam is asking?

[Taxation, October 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, since he does not want to talk about equalization, let us talk only about the transfers for health, education and social services. These have increased by 37% over 10 years in the other provinces, as compared to 8.3% over the same period in Quebec, all that because this Prime Minister changed the formula in 1995, and this formula puts Quebec at a disadvantage.

I am asking him if he will be working on eliminating this fiscal imbalance—at least, that is what it is called by everyone except the Liberals—at the October 26 meeting.

[Taxation, October 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, a study conducted by Luc Godbout, of the Université de Sherbrooke, revealed that, over the last decade, federal transfers to Quebec increased by only 2.7%, as compared to 34.4% for the Canadian provinces.

On the basis of these figures, will the Prime Minister admit that the fiscal imbalance is penalizing Quebec, and that it is in fact penalizing Quebec more than the Canadian provinces?

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, October 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I too rise on behalf of my party to indicate that we agree to amend the amendment to include a number of concerns which were raised during the election campaign, more specifically the use of the employment insurance fund only for workers' benefits; second, the opportunity for this House to discuss the whole issue of the defence shield; and finally, anything in connection with the fiscal imbalance and provincial areas of jurisdiction.

One lesson we must learn from the election, and that the negotiations we conducted, this weekend in particular, further reinforced, is that every party is prepared to help make things better, as long as the wishes expressed on June 28 are respected.