Monique Guay

[The Budget, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as long as the population from Rivière-du-Nord will see fit. I have been democratically elected. Our fellow citizens can count on our presence and on our experience to defend Quebec's interests here in Ottawa until Quebec becomes sovereign.

[The Budget, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I used extremely polite vocabulary in my speech. I do not like being accused of exaggeration. Our party does not exaggerate, quite the contrary. Maybe those accusations can be attributed to the lack of experience of the member opposite. We can excuse him for his mistake.

I am not talking about forcing people to retire because of their age. When a 50 year old worker loses her job because the company she was working for closes its doors, and the only work experience she had was with that company, and she is too young to collect pension benefits, we must help her. That is the kind of situation I am talking about.

I talked about post-secondary studies. It is true that students in Quebec might have less debt than students in other provinces, but they have debt nonetheless, and they must pay back their debt. Thus, there is no doubt that we must reinvest in and help our young people, so they can continue to study.

It is not enough simply to toss $245 million at us. This is not enough money. Yes, we will take it and, yes, we are happy to have it, but it is not enough. It must also be permanent. It cannot be just one part, one time, one year. It cannot be money given simply to placate Quebec and to clear the conscience of the Conservatives, who can now say that they did a good job, because they gave money to Quebec. I am sorry, but these arrangements must be permanent.

Ottawa is raking in astronomical surpluses. We know this, because we can add them up. The Bloc Québécois has always been the best at doing so. Therefore, this money must come back to us, and be allocated to the files in which we would most like to invest. This does not mean that other provinces will want to invest in the same areas.

Thus, let us decentralize things, as the Prime Minister likes to say. If he wants to decentralize, he has an opportunity to do so. I wish he would decentralize and allow us to invest, with our own means, where it is needed most, where our citizens have the greatest needs. In Quebec, the areas that need the greatest investment are health, education and our workers. We would like to help all these people, but it is up to us to decide and not up to the federal government.

We want to take control of our own affairs, we want to make our own decisions. That is what it means to be independent. And one day we will be a country, we will be sovereign, and when that day comes, we will have everything we need to function.

[The Budget, March 21st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague for her very interesting speech.

I will be following a certain chronological order. It is important to remind this House that neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals acknowledged the existence of the fiscal imbalance. In fact, they have yet to acknowledge it. It does not exist for them.

As a result of the work of the Parti Québécois since 1998—April 17, 1998 to be exact—the fiscal imbalance was discovered. The Séguin commission did indeed identify that there was a fiscal imbalance in Quebec.

Since then, the Bloc Québécois has taken on the challenge, in this House, of defending the existence of the fiscal imbalance, because it was absolutely necessary for the government to be aware of it and to understand that it existed in Quebec. At that time we were dealing with a Liberal government; now we have a Conservative government.

Having said that, after the election of the Conservative government, there was recognition finally that the fiscal imbalance existed in Quebec and solutions were put forward.

There are some good things in this budget and, as we have said, we will vote for it. We will not turn down money for Quebec, which really needs it. I will provide some glaring examples.

In the health field alone our needs are great. Our hospitals are overflowing and emergency departments cannot cope. How many Quebeckers cannot find a family doctor?

There is a danger: the creation of a two tier health care system. We do not want that in Quebec or in Canada. We are fighting as hard as we can to avoid that. What is needed is for our tax money, which is sent to Ottawa, to be returned to us.

Health is an area that is wholly and entirely under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. The administrative decisions are therefore up to us. The needs are truly great.

My son works at the hospital in Saint-Jérôme; this is a regional hospital serving a regional population. I can say that there is no shortage of work there. But there are shortages in many other areas, including hospital staff, nurses, doctors and emergency department space. As I said, there is a shortage of family physicians.

My riding is the one that has undergone the highest population growth. I have just received this information from my riding office. In barely five years the riding's population has increased by some 11,000 residents. The Laurentians is the region with the highest growth in Quebec.

And the health needs follow. This means that we need more pediatricians. Young families often come and settle in our region. That is why we need the money.

It would be great, of course, to get something back in certain areas, but it should also be done on a permanent basis. It is not right to keep playing this kind of give and take game in areas as important as heath and education. The fact is that there is not much in here for post-secondary education.

I would have a great deal to say on the matter. It is very important that measures be put in place to really help students. I can tell the hon. members about my daughter, who is currently a student. I have calculated how much my daughter's education will cost from the CEGEP to the master's degree and, without her mother's help, she would rack up a major debt.

There is talk about a scholarship program but we are not sure what it will look like, whereas we already have our own bursary system in place. You may not have been here at the time, Mr. Speaker, but you probably remember that we doggedly opposed the millennium scholarships because the program, in our opinion, overlapped one we already had in Quebec.

Send Quebec the money, but make it something permanent. We will manage it based on our own needs, those of our students, to ensure that they get a good education and a higher education.

I know hundreds of young university students who must drop out of school because they do not have the means to pay. Or else the students go into debt and spend 10 years after graduation paying off their debts. This is unacceptable. A student will not necessarily find a well-paid job right after graduating from university. First they have to prove themselves. All of this must be taken into consideration. So, I think we must get our priorities right in the areas of health and education.

I would also like to talk about what is missing from this budget. It is good that we were given a little something to spend. Hopefully this will be done under a Parti Québécois government, which will likely be elected next Monday, and which has very good policies for Quebec.

I want to talk about what was left out. For a long time, we have been asking for an independent employment insurance fund. There are enormous surpluses in this fund. We could reinvest in employment, reduce the number of hours required and increase income. Instead of being 50%, we could increase the income to 55% or 60%, depending on the surpluses generated by the employment insurance fund. These surpluses should be reinvested in the employment insurance fund to serve the unemployed, or be reinvested in training programs. This could be done in different ways. But this is not what is going on now. Surpluses from the employment insurance fund are spent wherever. The unemployed do not benefit like they should. It is too bad this was not in the budget.

There is also the whole matter of the textile, furniture and aerospace industries. In Quebec, there have been an incredible number of closures. These companies will never reopen, some are closed for good. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. We have to take care of these people. Often, entire villages shut down because it was the companies that were sustaining them. When a company closes its doors, workers are left with nothing. They are the forgotten ones. That is why we asked for a program for the older workers, like POWA—which existed under the Liberal government—to help older workers take their retirement a little sooner. If a company closed, they could have some money to carry them through until their retirement. Unfortunately, there is nothing for our older workers. It is truly a shame.

There is also the social housing issue. Social housing is something I have already defended here in this House. I have been here for 13 years and I have been a critic for a number of files. In Quebec, there is a social housing crisis. It is important to recognize it in a region such as my riding with a population growth as a great as I mentioned. In five years, receiving 12,000 new people in a single riding is quite significant. This also means more housing. Not all of these people require social housing, of course, but the need is there. In Saint-Jérôme, the regional capital of my riding, the need is greatest. Low-income earners need social housing. Often it is single women and single older women who need this type of housing.

In closing, we will vote in favour of the budget, even though there is still a lot of work to be done. The voters can count on the Bloc. We will never stop fighting for what is rightfully ours, rightfully Quebec's. We are not beggars and we know full well that the money is here and that it comes from our taxes. We will get back what is rightfully ours in order to live better, in order to live well in Quebec, and to live in health and happiness in our Quebec.

[Aerospace Industry, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, three weeks ago Minister Bachand acknowledged that Quebec's share of the aerospace industry is about 60%. Today, to please his Conservative friends and prevent them from losing face, he is lowering the bar and would be satisfied with fewer spinoffs.

Does the Minister of Industry plan to stop repeating his mantra of having confidence in the capabilities of the Quebec aerospace industry and instead concentrate his efforts on ensuring that this sector obtains its fair share of 60%?

[Aerospace Industry, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, to avoid antagonizing their federalist friends in Ottawa, the Quebec Liberals are lowering the bar for the Conservatives and curtailing their demands regarding the Boeing military contract spinoffs for the Quebec aerospace industry.

Does the government intend to act responsibly and ensure that Quebec will receive its fair share of the Boeing contract, which should be about 60%?

[Security Information, February 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the House that the Bloc Québécois voted against this type of measure in 2002.

The Supreme Court goes even further. It unanimously deplores the fact that judges do not have access to all the evidence since the suspect cannot provide a defence.

Does the government intend to amend the legislation to give judges the full capacity to rule on security certificates presented to them, thus enabling them to hand down informed rulings?

[Security Information, February 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court of Canada has just ruled that security certificates are invalid because they violate fundamental rights.

As a result of this ruling, will the government abandon its George Bush tactics and amend the law as quickly as possible so that those charged under a security certificate may have access to the evidence in order to have a full and complete defence?

[Judicial Appointments, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, this is like listening to a broken record. We are sick of hearing the same responses.

In his speech on this motion, the former justice minister already denounced judicial activism regarding the redefinition of marriage.

Are we to understand that the recent changes to the composition of the selection committees are intended not only to reward their cronies, but also to ensure that future decisions will correspond to his ideology?

[Judicial Appointments, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government's strategy has been clear since 2003, when the President of the Treasury Board moved a motion in the House, calling upon the government to bring in measures to protect and reassert the will of Parliament against certain court decisions.

Will the government admit that its strategy is nothing new, since its objective was already clear in 2003? Once in power, it wanted to appoint judges who share the same ideology.

[Official Languages, February 9th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that is disinformation and it makes no sense.

By praising her colleague's plan, the minister is agreeing to downgrade the importance of French in the armed forces. Why does she not instead put all of her energy into implementing the recommendations of the former Commissioner of Official Languages, who criticized the army for being slow to respect its official language obligations?