Mr. Speaker, we have just heard the new Prime Minister state his intentions to be an agent of change.
Last week, the Bloc Quebecois stated its expectations with regard to the Speech from the Throne. At that point, I identified the major concerns of Quebeckers who are calling for change, and the issues on which we could measure the Prime Minister's intentions.
The first issue is the most fundamental one for Quebec: respect for its difference. Second, there is the issue of social justice, as seen in the pillaging of the employment insurance fund. Third, we are concerned about the direction the Prime Minister wants to take in foreign policy and defence. The fourth issue is the democratic deficit. The fifth concerns the environment and sustainable development. And finally, there is the issue of government ethics.
The Prime Minister has not responded to any of these. He talks about them but offers no real solution. This is a throne speech that worries Quebec a great deal, one that looks exactly like all the others we have seen in the past. This speech could just as well have been written by Jean Chrétien.
The Prime Minister talks about change. If there is one change that Quebeckers have been waiting for, for a long time, it is a change in the federal government's attitude toward the distinct identity of Quebec. What the people of Quebec are waiting for is that Ottawa will move from a position of denial to one of real recognition of this Quebec difference.
In his speech, the Prime Minister announced that he will be doing exactly the opposite: he will continue to deny the existence of the Quebec nation, no better or worse than other nations, no better or worse than the Canadian nation, but simply different.
The Prime Minister recognizes the first nations, the aboriginal nations—something Quebec did long before Ottawa, by the way—and that is good. But why can he not do the same for the nation of Quebec?
The Speech from the Throne opened with some rather banal observations, but one little sentence caught my attention. That was:
We have our Canadian values—
I could have said exactly the same thing, referring to our Quebec values. The nation of Quebec also has its own values, different ones, and a different way of doing things. This throne speech not only ignores the different nature of Quebec, but announces that it will do everything to remove such a difference.
The Prime Minister has told us, and I quote:
Jurisdiction must be respected. But—
The important word is the word “but”, because his throne speech is stating that, given the multiplication of federal intrusions into Quebec's areas of jurisdiction, jurisdiction will be ignored. Jurisdiction must be respected, but if the needs are there, Ottawa will interfere, even if it lacks jurisdiction or even expertise. Quebec and the provinces will be shown how to handle emergencies, although this government is responsible for the administration of almost no hospitals, with the exception of a few for veterans and the military.
But Ottawa knows best. Ottawa knows everything. It will hire lots of public servants to keep statistics. That is not what we need. We need direct public services, which were cut by this Prime Minister when he was finance minister.
Of course there are needs in health, education and in terms of family policy. We know that, but these needs were created by the current Prime Minister when he cut transfer payments and steadily created the fiscal imbalance.
He chose to give the municipalities the benefits of the GST. We are in agreement there.
But, if the Prime Minister cares so much about health care and education, why not do the same for school boards and hospitals, which also pay GST? For those claiming to be concerned about health care and education, this is something concrete.
The intrusions announced by the Prime Minister abound: health care, education, labour—we learned this morning—families, day care, early childhood education, people with disabilities, research, training and municipalities. The Prime Minister wants to define Canada's priorities, priorities that will once again be imposed on Quebec.
Curiously, there is not a single word in his speech about parental leave. But it is a good example of what makes Quebec different. Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada that wants to implement its own, distinct, parental leave program. We had to go to court to get things moving. The Prime Minister has decided to appeal the decision because Ottawa wants to continue to stick its nose where it does not belong, because it finds it unacceptable that Quebec express this difference.
The Prime Minister also makes no mention of the most basic problem in Canada today: fiscal imbalance. While Quebec and the provinces are scraping the bottom of the barrel to fund basic health services, education and help for young families, Ottawa is paying out billions on administration, office furnishings and polls, not to mention sponsorships, the gun registry or the endless scandals at HRDC. Over five years, there has been a 39% increase in the cost of operating the federal machinery, its departments and its programs. That is where our tax dollars went.
On top of that, the Prime Minister tells us he is going to increase the number of intrusions. Having strangled Quebec financially, at a time when needs are growing, the one with the funds takes advantage of the situation to intrude still further.
In no way are the expectations of Quebec and the provinces being met as far as funding, transfer payments and equalization payments are concerned. He has decided to continue with building a Canada in which all the decisions are made in Ottawa and the policy of strangling Quebec financially. If there has been any change at all, it is in the speed at which this Canada is being built; it has picked up.
There is only one conclusion Quebeckers can draw from this statement of intention: sovereignty for Quebec is more urgent than ever.
As for social justice, an important value for Quebeckers, the Prime Minister skipped over this, as usual. There is not one single word about employment insurance, yet this was a serious blot on the Prime Minister's copybook when he was finance minister. His government helped itself to more than $43 billion from the employment insurance fund. This behaviour bears a strange resemblance to that of employers who help themselves to money from their employees' retirement fund and take off with it, often to some tax haven. The Prime Minister has some personal expertise in this area.
Only four out of ten contributors to the fund will be eligible for benefits if they lose their job. The situation is even worse for women and young people.
The Prime Minister, who loves to draw attention to his success in business, knows very well that any insurance company doing such a thing would have gone bankrupt in no time, and its directors would have ended up in court.
The Auditor General says the government failed to respect the intent of the Employment Insurance Act. What more will it take for the Prime Minister to understand that this profound social injustice must be addressed? By ignoring this injustice, he is confirming that he has no intention of changing his attitude and that he is using employment insurance as an employment tax.
How does he who presided over massive cuts in that area plan to address the glaring problem of social housing? Not a word about that.
How does he plan to address the unfair treatment of those seniors who were denied the guaranteed income supplement? Not a word about that either. Seniors are being told, “We are looking out for your good, and we have got your goods”.
This goes completely against Quebec's values, and against my understanding of the Canadian values of solidarity as well. There is nothing new in the area of social justice.
The Prime Minister announced his intention to address the democratic deficit through measures to enhance the role of MPs. That is all very fine and well, but it does not go far enough. The first test will be for the Prime Minister to allow a free vote in the House on the missile defence shield; we want a free vote on this issue.
In addition, the Prime Minister does not say a word about allowing MPs to debate and vote on international agreements entered into by Canada. Yet, there lies the main democratic deficit. While more and more of these agreements affect the lives of people, parliamentarians do not get to debate and vote on them.
Quebeckers are hit twice as hard by this democratic deficit, because they are represented at the international level by a government that does not recognize Quebec's distinct character.
Moreover, the Prime Minister said that the debate on foreign policy and defence is being postponed until next fall, after the election. This is not very democratic, especially since the Prime Minister has already announced that Canada would participate in the missile defence shield, spend billions of dollars on new military equipment, yet allow the Bush administration to develop the foreign policy and have Canada play a complementary role. Washington decides and Ottawa follows. George W. Bush makes the decisions and Canada's Prime Minister follows.
In this speech we should have seen something about the true sources of contention with the U.S.: the missile defence shield, the softwood lumber issue, mad cow disease, or expanding the St. Lawrence Seaway just to keep the U.S. Army happy.
His new Minister of National Defence is a hawk who is for the war in Iraq. At the end of the day, all the fundamental decisions have already been made and the Prime Minister is saying that we can debate all of this after the election. In fact, the Prime Minister is cynically adding to the democratic deficit.
The only area where the Prime Minister seems be taking the right step is on the issue of decontaminating federal sites. On the face of it, that is good news. However, he has it all wrong when it comes to climate change.
The Prime Minister is placing the burden of Canada's commitment to reduce greenhouse gases on individuals when he says, “Environmental stewardship must be everybody’s responsibility”. Pollution comes from a few sectors in particular. I am talking about oil, gas and coal production. The Prime Minister is quite familiar with this sector since he has participated in it.
One day the Prime Minister should explain to the public how he intends to meet Canada's commitment to reduce emissions by 6% based on 1990 levels, while doubling oil production from the tar sands for export to the United States.
How is he going to do that? Is he going to make Quebec pay for the oil industry again? The Prime Minister is careful not to enforce the only valid principle under the circumstances: the polluter pay principle. To read his comments and to hear and see his reactions during debate on Kyoto, he might well favour a polluter paid principle in order to please his friends in Western Canada. Whose interests is he protecting?
There is not one word about the mandatory labelling of GMOs. There is not one word about the widening of the St. Lawrence, a project harmful to the environment and Quebec's economy, just to please the U.S. military.
What about ethics? The Prime Minister has failed in this regard. A bit like those Groupaction reports, all he is promising, for the third time, is to appoint an independent ethics commissioner who reports to the House, as we have long demanded and which seems impossible.
What about the decisions, totally lacking in credibility, made by the current ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson? Will the Prime Minister have those decisions, including those which directly concern him, reviewed by the new commissioner? Will the Prime Minister launch a independent public inquiry so as to finally shed light on all the patronage scandals and misappropriation of funds that accompanied the Liberal government's propaganda campaigns when he was second-in-command?
Will we get to the bottom of the HRDC scandal, which has been under investigation for the past four years, as well as the sponsorship scandal and the CINAR affair? Who is he protecting this time? Will they try to cloud the issue, like his predecessor did?
Speaking of ethics, it took the opposition's stubbornness for the full amount in federal contracts received by the Prime Minister's family business to be made public. We now know that he received $161 million in contracts and not $137,000 as the government claimed for so long. The Prime Minister is saying that when he heard the amount, he knew it was not right. It took him three months to tell us that. He thought things would blow over. That is what he thought. How can he talk about transparency without blushing?
The Prime Minister is also a strong supporter of tax havens. To date, his company, Canada Steamship Lines, has saved over $100 million by opening a financial holding company in Barbados. He told Canadians and Quebeckers, “Tighten your belts and pay your taxes. I am not paying, because I am going elsewhere”. Canada is good for contracts and subsidies, but not for paying taxes. That is what Canada Steamship Lines says; it belongs to the PM's family and used to belong to him.
Under these circumstances, how can he talk about ethics and transparency? There is a great deal of cynicism on the part of the Prime Minister. When it comes to ethical issues, the Prime Minister is doing exactly like his predecessor, except that, this time, we are not talking about a few thousand dollars, but millions of dollars. The situation could get worse for all our fellow citizens.
The Prime Minister had told us to expect changes; he did not deliver. As I said, his throne speech could have been written by his predecessor, Jean Chrétien. This is not a new government. What we have here is the fourth Chrétien government, taking the same attitude in refusing to recognize the Quebec nation, multiplying intrusions and perpetuating the fiscal imbalance that is choking Quebec.
The Prime Minister also clearly showed his intention to perpetuate the social injustices that he himself created by remaining totally silent on issues such as the funnelling off of money from the EI fund; the fact that elderly people were deprived of the guaranteed income supplement; and the acute problem of social housing.
The Prime Minister claims to want to eliminate the democratic deficit, but he does the opposite. His foreign policy is based on the direction taken by the Bush administration. He says there will be a debate on foreign policy and defence after the election, once the money has been spent. He refuses to allow members of Parliament to debate and vote on international agreements.
Speaking of democracy, his cynicism is unprecedented. He also claims to want to protect the environment and to respect Kyoto but, in fact, he is making sure that polluters are protected.
This Prime Minister refuses to respect Quebec's distinctiveness. He is going against the values of solidarity of Quebeckers. He is protecting the interests of rich companies instead of protecting the environment. He would rather defend the interests of the Bush administration than those of ordinary citizens. He is a strong believer in the worst practices related to globalization, tax havens and flags of convenience. He is very proud of Canadians, but not enough to fly the Canadian flag on his own ships.
His sense of ethics is flexible to say the least. If there is a change from the previous government, it is that this one is more cynical. This is why I am moving the following amendment to the amendment:
That the amendment be amended by adding the following: “and that this House finds that the Speech from the Throne denies the existence of the nation and values of Quebec and that it reiterates the federal government's desire to increase its intrusions into the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces”.
This amendment to an amendment is seconded by the hon. member for Drummond.
