Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Gatineau.
I am pleased to speak on this Liberal opposition day. The motion we are studying today comes in the wake of the Conservative government's 2009 budget, which the Liberals supported and the Bloc Québécois condemned. In this budget, the government asked for $3 billion to be spent by the Treasury Board by June. The details of this vote are still unknown, and the Conservative members are saying very little about it.
We do not know where or how the Conservatives plan to spend this money. We do not know which sector or which regions they want to target. In short, on the pretext that they have to get the money out quickly to boost the ailing economy, the Conservatives are asking Parliament to sign a blank cheque for $3 billion. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities has admitted that the political ministers in each region will be consulted on allocating the money.
This is a far cry from the federal Accountability Act. We now know that this government has a partisan, ideological agenda, and we have little confidence in it. This situation opens the door to political interference in allocating funding, at the expense of economic effectiveness. At a time when polls show that their popularity is waning and that people are unhappy with their political performance, the Conservatives will be able to use this money to win more votes instead of actually stimulating the economy.
In the interest of rigour and transparency in the management of public funds, the Bloc Québécois opposes the Conservative government's attempt to spend $3 billion with no parliamentary oversight. Too often, the federal government has shown that it can be negligent in managing slush funds, as the Liberal Party proved in the sponsorship scandal.
We have to admit that it is rather ironic that the Liberals, in today's motion, are concerned with rigour and transparency in the management of public funds, given that this party has a great deal of experience, even expertise, in the partisan use of public money. However, an analysis of the Liberal motion reveals that it does virtually nothing to prevent the Conservative government from spending the $3 billion as it pleases. In fact, the Liberal Party agreed to allow the federal government to use this $3 billion fund without parliamentary oversight when it voted for the budget and it is doing so again today with this motion.
Nonetheless, this motion does force the government to be accountable, albeit minimally. It is evident that the motion, as described by the Liberals, ensures that after the budgets are adopted, we will be informed too late to intervene in the use of these public funds. That is shameful and therefore we will continue to hound this government to ensure that the money disbursed from this fund is spent legitimately and equitably.
Apart from the issues of rigour and transparency in the management of public funds, the government's request for a vote of $3 billion shows another fundamental problem. This request demonstrates, once again, the ineffectiveness of the stimulus plan adopted by the Conservatives and supported by the Liberals.
The government was incapable of proposing an appropriate plan to navigate the crisis and now must ask the House for additional funds, which, it says, will allow it to propose recovery initiatives not included in its plan.
In other words, this measure demonstrates once again that the Conservative's 2009 budget did not address the crisis at all and did not take the needs of Quebeckers into account. It is a completely unacceptable budget for Quebec and for a population that, in this time of recession, was entitled to expect appropriate and sufficient measures from the current government.
We know that the Conservative government, with the Liberals' backing, has decided, instead of helping Quebec, to deprive it of important ways of dealing with this crisis. On the other hand, they have chosen to heed the wishes of Ontario, the west, and the oil companies, while, the furniture industry in Berthier—Maskinongé is struggling, as are the agriculture and forestry sectors everywhere in Quebec.
As for employment insurance, while 26,000 Quebec jobs were lost this past January, the Liberals and Conservatives decided to do nothing to remedy the accessibility of EI, even though approximately 50% of people losing their jobs are not eligible for benefits. What is more, they refused to do away with the waiting period and ensure that people can get their money as quickly as possible without penalty, in this time of economic crisis.
Not only is the government refusing to improve access to employment insurance, but it has also decided, backed by the Liberals, to let big business get out of paying billions of dollars in taxes by using tax havens. Those lost billions could have been put to far better use for the jobless and low income seniors. But no. There is one indisputable fact: while the Bloc wants to work for our regions and our people who are struggling the most, the Conservatives and the Liberals are still, as always, protecting the great multinationals that want to use these tax shelters and not pay taxes.
I could also speak of the changes to the equalization formula made without consulting Quebec, changes which will deprive Quebec, in these times of economic crisis, of $1 billion of the equalization payments it ought to have received this year.
To sum up, the Liberal Party's motion has given us yet another opportunity to demonstrate that this budget and the proposed measures do not meet Quebec's needs. This debate has also shown that it is impossible for elected representatives from Quebec who belong to major federalist parties in the House to defend Quebec's interests effectively, that only Bloc Québécois members can do the job, and that we need Quebec sovereignty has become more important than ever before so that we can control all of our own economic, political and social tools.
