Jean Charest

[Collège Militaire Royal De Saint-Jean, March 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister and it pertains to the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean.

It is now obvious that the decision to close this college was misguided. However, we recognize that the closure is part of a budget decision and that the government finds itself in an extremely difficult financial situation. That is why many of us, including the Government of Quebec, have called for a moratorium.

Under the circumstances, we think it would be reasonable for the government to take the time to examine this question thoroughly before making an irrevocable decision. This is not, in our view, an unreasonable request.

Therefore, my question for the Prime Minister is as follows: Under the circumstances, would he not be willing to take the time to review this matter thoroughly before making such a final decision?

[Committees Of The House, March 7th, 1994]

There is no consent, Mr. Speaker.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 1994]

There is no consent, Mr. Speaker.

[Point Of Order, February 25th, 1994]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have another point of order. While I am on my feet I notice my friend from the Bloc rose for a second time to reiterate his point. I find interesting all this talk of a new Parliament and the previous government being defeated because of the way things were. All I hear from them in terms of our practices in the House is that what is being applied to us was the old system.

So much for the change, the new Parliament and the will to do things differently.

My point of order relates to the Minister of Finance who in his reply offered to make information available to me. His reply was unclear in terms of what he exactly was committed to do. I was asking a specific question.

[Point Of Order, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a point of order in relation to question period.

You and other members of the House will have noticed that twice I rose in my place to try to get your attention to put a supplementary question to two questions asked of the Minister of Finance.

I know members of the House would want to remember it has been a practice during question period that if there is a supplementary question to a main question and another supplementary asked by another member, the Speaker recognizes that.

Given the circumstances of the particular role in the House where there are independent members who may want to pursue a matter further, Mr. Speaker, you and the House may want to consider the practice of allowing members to ask a further supplementary question so that Parliament and question period can fulfil their true role of getting to the bottom of a matter and drawing from the government the basic information Canadians are seeking on a specific issue.

I wanted to raise that matter on one specific point of order. I will stop here, but I do have another point of order I want to raise in relation to an answer the Minister of Finance gave to my question.

[Employment, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am not deluding myself, it will not last.

My question is for the Minister of Finance who, I notice, tends to systematically blame the previous government, whereas the Prime Minister promised during the election campaign not to do so.

We heard today that he artificially inflated the deficit for partisan purposes. However, since he seems to be saying in his answers that he follows departmental rules, I would be curious to see if the Minister of Finance would share with this House the analyses done by his department on the impact of his budget on employment.

[Employment, February 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker-

[The Late Irénée Pelletier, February 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, even as I address this House, Mr. Irénée Pelletier, who was the member of Parliament for the constituency of Sherbrooke between 1972 and 1984 and who unfortunately passed away last Friday, is being buried in a religious ceremony in the church at Saint-André-de-Madawaska, the village of his birth.

Irénée Pelletier died at the age of 54. He was the 13th of 14 children, something many of us can identify with, and he accomplished many things in his life.

After receiving a BA from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, he earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toulouse in France. The subject of his thesis was Canada's aid to developing countries, and this was in the very early seventies.

He had a very full life. He was a member of the Canadian forces and he was also very active. He travelled extensively and after his studies he worked as a professor with the faculty of administration at the University of Sherbrooke. In 1972 he ran for the first time as the candidate of the Liberal Party of Canada in the riding of Sherbrooke. Of course he won that election and those that followed in 1974, 1979 and 1980.

While sitting in the House of Commons as the member for Sherbrooke, he was very active and became interested in several issues. For several years he chaired the Standing Committee on Regional Industrial Expansion. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture. He was also very active in various interparliamentary groups.

He was very interested in peace and disarmament issues. In fact-I remember because he told me himself-he had to make a personal, very difficult decision when the House held a debate on cruise missiles and he felt compelled to vote against his own government on a motion to test these missiles.

He told me how torn he was feeling during this debate and how he finally decided to take a very personal position that, incidentally, reflected his deep concern over the hunger problem and other issues affecting to different degrees people suffering around the world.

I had the privilege to face Irénée Pelletier during the 1984 general election. If I may, I would like to relate an election anecdote that says a lot about Mr. Pelletier. We conducted two polls during the election. The first one said basically two things: first, that Mr. Pelletier was very popular with Sherbrooke voters, which was bad news for the other candidates. Another piece of bad news at the very beginning of the campaign was that Mr. Pelletier was going to win the election. The second poll asked the same questions, with the same results.

At the end of the campaign, Mr. Pelletier was just as popular with Sherbrooke voters but this time we found out the wave that was about to sweep Canada was also going to have an impact in the constituency he had been representing since 1972.

Today, it is with some emotion that I join those who have known him in saying how much we will miss him. I met Irénée Pelletier several times after the 1984 election. He was always very generous. I saw him a few days before he died. He was a committed man who served his community better than anyone else ever did. He left his mark in Sherbrooke in several areas because he was a very effective member of Parliament, and he always supported those who sought to help the disadvantaged in our society.

Sherbrooke has a service organization called Cercovie that he was instrumental in founding several years ago. We can thank Irénée Pelletier for that accomplishment.

On behalf of my family and especially of those who knew Mr. Pelletier, who had the privilege to be represented by him in the House of Commons, I want to say how much we will miss him. I especially want to offer our sincere condolences to his family and say in closing that the constituency of Sherbrooke and the country as a whole have lost a great man.

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, allow me to congratulate the hon. member for La Prairie on his comments and on his election. This is the first time I have the opportunity to do so since he became a member of this House.

His comments on program evaluation are interesting. I urge him to pursue these issues with the chairpersons of the various committees, because these people can undertake program evaluations and they do so in a larger context than is possible for the Auditor General, and even with the departments themselves, as I and other members opposite have seen in the past; indeed, there are numerous opportunities to do so.

In any case, I have a question for the hon. member and I would like to know the position of the Bloc Quebecois on a statement made yesterday by the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, which suggests that the federal government is considering taxing group insurance benefits, as well as health and dental insurance benefits. Such a measure would have an impact on some 20 million Canadians and would directly affect nine million workers across the country.

Using its own data, the Association indicated that a person with no dependent and an annual salary of around $25,000 would have to pay $275 more per year in taxes. A family earning about $40,000 a year would face a tax increase of $425. Similarly, a family with two salaries totalling $80,000 a year would have to pay $700 more in taxes if, in its next budget, the federal government decides to introduce this measure.

I want to put this in the appropriate context, so that the hon. member for La Prairie can give me the Bloc Quebecois position on this issue. This measure would be introduced while we anticipate a very comprehensive debate on health care in Canada and, I suppose, on the role of the federal and provincial governments, the private sector, the taxpayers, and so on and so forth.

Does the member not find it alarming that this measure could have such serious consequences on the budget of every individual and family? Does he not find it even more alarming that the government is proposing a comprehensive debate on health care but would introduce such a measure before even holding that debate?

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to make a comment and ask a question of the member for Brant. First I want to offer her my congratulations on her election to this place and for her speech and comments.

I want to get the reaction of the member for Brant on some information released yesterday by the Canadian Life and Health Insurances Association of Canada, which voiced some concern about federal taxation of group health and dental insurance.

The information put forward yesterday was to the effect that the government is seriously considering taxing group health insurance and dental insurance. This insurance is paid by employers in a lot of instances for about nine million working Canadians. It benefits about 20 million Canadians, I understand, according to the information, families across this country who receive these benefits.

My understanding is that this would be a pretty important tax grab. The association has offered some numbers from its research. It indicates that for a worker who has no dependents earning $25,000 per year the impact of this tax measure would be about $275 a year in additional income tax. It goes on to say that a family with one bread winner who earns about $40,000 a year would pay $425 in additional income tax on the same taxable benefit.

I will just finish the quote: "For a two income household with $80,000 a year it would be $700 more in additional taxes a year". That is a pretty big increase, even for retired people.

My question for the member for Brant is the following. If there is going to be a debate in this country about health insurance and how we apply it, and I understand that is what the government intends to do, would it not make more sense to have the people and employers involved in the industry participate in that debate before such a dramatic tax grab takes place that will affect 20 million people and nine million working men and women?