Pierre Paquette

[The Economy, February 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite interesting to see the parliamentary secretary question the numbers issued by Statistics Canada, a federal agency with an international reputation.

Tembec and Domtar have recently announced layoffs. So have Bombardier and Bell Helicopter. Yet the government offers mere crumbs to the manufacturing and aerospace sectors. The Minister of Finance is only just beginning to peep out from under his blindfold and is now talking about perhaps adding further support measures.

Will the Prime Minister correct the situation and announce a real support plan, as the Bloc Québécois has been calling for for several months?

[The Economy, February 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we learned this morning from Statistics Canada that the manufacturing sector lost over 100,000 jobs in January, nearly a third of them in Quebec. That is the largest monthly loss ever since comparable data have been available.

Given that the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, does not believe that the Conservative plan will produce the desired results in terms of employment, will the Prime Minister admit that his budget is off the mark and that it puts the manufacturing and forestry sectors at a disadvantage?

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. The Canadian government and the Prime Minister did not act soon enough. I do not understand why it took weeks for the Embassy of Canada in the United States to forward information about the protectionist measures in Obama's recovery plan, in particular the bill being examined by the House of Representatives.

Action was taken after the House of Representatives passed the bill. Once again, it is not an easy thing to do. I am not saying that it is. They could also have mobilized parliamentarians from this House. I remember quite well that, for certain matters, a delegation of our parliamentarians met with their American counterparts to try to explain our point of view.

At present, given what is at stake in this matter, not enough pressure is being applied. I am not saying that nothing is being done, but a great deal more pressure should be applied and there should be better coordination of all countries, parliamentarians, the government and the Prime Minister to achieve our objective. As we saw with softwood lumber, protectionist sentiments still run high in the United States, even in a period of economic growth.

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be optimistic given that our own government and our own Prime Minister are attempting to convince the American president and members of Congress of the importance of this non-protectionist approach.

I am convinced that Mr. Obama will not go up to bat first if he does not believe that trading partners—whether Canada, Mexico, Japan or Europe—are firmly committed to open markets even in times of crisis.

I believe that the Canadian government has failed to apply pressure on Mr. Obama and the American legislators in order to convince them that we have the right approach.

Therefore, we must first call on the Prime Minister of Canada and the current government to apply adequate pressure. A letter—a very polite letter—from Canada's ambassador, Mr. Wilson, is not enough to convince Mr. Obama to step up to the plate and solve the problem.

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate which is so important for Canada, obviously for Quebec as well, and also for our American neighbours. One of the responsibilities of the Conservative government and the Prime Minister is to ensure that both the American president and the American politicians understand this reality. Our economies are intertwined and we have no interest, none of us, in having protectionist measures such as those contained in the stimulus plan that was presented to and passed by the House of Representatives. There is also the discussion that is taking place in the Senate. We know that Senator McCain's amendment was defeated, and so we find ourselves back at square one.

I do not need to talk about the close ties between the Quebec, Canadian and American economies. My colleagues—the member for Sherbrooke in particular—covered that. However, it is important to remember that, for Quebec in particular, this trade is extremely important. Today we find ourselves in a situation where, because of Quebec's dependence on oil—which is true for the rest of Canada as well, but since Canada exports oil to the United States, it is not as obvious as in Quebec's case, since we do not produce or export oil—Quebec's trade balance, whether in terms of foreign partners or Canadian provinces, is currently running a deficit of $7 to $8 billion.

I mentioned earlier that this dependence on oil was important because it is one of the significant causes of this trade deficit. We know that our oil imports in Quebec represent nearly $6 to $7 billion, which explains a large part of the trade deficit.

Obviously, where the advantage lies is with our American partners. In fact, we in Quebec have a trade surplus with the United States of around $5 billion. If protectionist policies became the norm in the U.S., we would have an even worse problem. In fact, we already have a problem in terms of trade which is, as I have said, related to our oil dependency, but also to the fact that, for some years, the Canadian dollar was inflated, by oil exports from Alberta to the United States in particular. This inflated dollar did a considerable amount of harm to the competitive ability of manufacturers, particularly those in Quebec, but the same is true for Ontario. We amuse ourselves by repeating this, though it is far from amusing: even the government ought to have twigged to that as early as 2007.

I like saying—and again not because it is amusing, but rather because it illustrates the extent to which the government was asleep at the switch—that in the Minister of Finance's economic statement in October 2007, on page 28, there was a lovely table showing that all industrial sectors had been declining since 2005, with the exception of oil and hydrocarbons. So steps should have been taken as early as 2007, even 2006, to help the manufacturing sector. There was a refusal to take such actions, and unfortunately the budget of last week continues that tradition. Once again, there is significant aid to the automotive sector, in the form of loan guarantees, but nothing for the forestry sector and nothing, or next to nothing, for aerospace. When we think, for instance, of the $170 million over two years for all of Canada, including Quebec, for the forestry crisis, we can see that this is pretty puny as support goes. Annually, it works out to about $10 to $20 million for Quebec. That is clearly inadequate, particularly since Quebec is there the forestry crisis has hit the hardest.

It is extremely important to us for the Conservative government, the Government of Canada, to set this campaign of persuasion against protectionism as its number one priority.

We in the Bloc Québécois hope that this protection issue, which is at risk of pitting Canada against the United States, can be solved by diplomatic means, rather than through the courts.

I must say that I was somewhat surprised. When it is a matter of diplomacy, we feel that things have to go beyond a phone call from the Prime Minister to the American President—and we do not know if that call has even been made—to tell him that one of the provisions in his legislation poses a serious problem for us, and we think that it is in neither his interests or our own for that provision to be maintained. One expects the government and the Prime Minister to be extremely active on the diplomatic level. Yet we learn from a Canadian Press report that the Prime Minister of Canada called Mexican President Felipe Caldéron yesterday evening, that is on February 4. Mexico is one of the three partners in NAFTA. One of the agreements seems not to be respected by the House of Representative provisions, and it is currently under discussion in the Senate. That agreement seems to be at cross purposes with NAFTA, according to nearly all Canadian and Quebec experts. One might have thought that the Prime Minister would have been on the phone to the Mexican President as soon as the American intentions were made public, with a proposal that they join forces against this rise in U.S. protectionism. But no, it took the Prime Minister somewhere between 10 days and 2 weeks to make the call to the president of Mexico, one of the three partners in NAFTA.

I seriously wonder what the Prime Minister and the Conservative government have done to try to coordinate their actions with the Europeans. We need to remember that under the provision of the bill, which is currently before the Senate and was passed by the House of Representatives, this protectionist measure will apply not just to Canadian steel, but to all manufactured products, wherever they come from. So the Europeans, like us, have a vested interest in seeing the protectionist approach in President Obama's recovery plan disappear.

We have no evidence that the Prime Minister took the initiative to get on the phone and secure the European Union's support. Reference has been made to the World Trade Organization rules. That may be a less direct route than NAFTA, but there are provisions to prevent the use of protectionist measures. For example, I am thinking of the clause providing for reciprocity between WTO trading partners. If Canada agrees to allow American steel into our country, then the Americans have to agree to let in our steel.

These provisions must be used, not aggressively, but simply to tell the American President and American politicians that rules were created in times of economic growth to address problems during times of difficulty or crisis. Trading partners must not take the first opportunity to abandon the rules they created to manage crises, because we are in a crisis. I wholeheartedly share the opinion of the movers of the Liberal motion. Everyone knows that a rise in protectionism will only exacerbate and prolong the economic slowdown. We need to learn from the 1930s.

In closing, I want to remind this House that in the United States at present, and particularly with the new Democratic administration, there is an awareness of international trade and globalization that, unfortunately, the Conservative government does not have. I am thinking of all those measures that are needed to create a balance between healthy competition and a certain number of rights.

That may be the crux of the problem in the United States. Like many Quebeckers and Canadians and workers around the world, they felt that freer trade in recent decades benefited only people with capital and was not in workers' interests. And that has to be corrected. Unfortunately, that feeling is not reflected on the other side of the House.

[Taxation, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the Prime Minister is ducking the issue. He is not answering my question, which was also asked yesterday by the leader of the Bloc Québécois.

The advisory group that is being used to justify the minister's decision is in a clear conflict of interest. Of the six members, four come from businesses that could have or that could in the future benefit from this scheme. For example, there is the former CEO of Scotia, the Canadian bank with the most subsidiaries in tax havens.

Is the Prime Minister aware that pleasing the fat cats of Bay Street is not enough to justify his scandalous decision?

[Taxation, February 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, while the Conservative budget offers mere crumbs to help the thousands of people who will lose their jobs and nothing for troubled industries and regions, the Minister of Finance will allow Canadian multinationals to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes by using tax havens and will encourage job creation overseas.

How can the Prime Minister explain that his government has quietly abandoned a provision of the Income Tax Act meant to fight against tax havens?

[The Budget, February 3rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé for his question.

Barely 47% of the people who pay into employment insurance are entitled to benefits. People are penalized just when they need some assistance. Adding five weeks will help some working people, and we agree with that, but most will not benefit at all.

If the government had any courage it would have overhauled the employment insurance system so that people who contribute to it can access it. The government also could have eliminated the two-week waiting period, which does not make any sense. Once again, the Conservative government shows no sign of having any vision at all. We will vote against the budget.

[The Budget, February 3rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, since it enables me to continue what I was saying. I agree with what he says. This government is totally lacking in empathy and compassion for the victims of the present crisis. Let us remind him that this present crisis is the result of a financial crisis which is in turn the result of financial deregulation and speculative frenzy by the heads of certain major financial institutions.

We have the victims before us, and as victims they need help and support. We do, of course, agree with the measures for training and retraining and worker adjustment measures, but it must be acknowledged that people need proper income support while they are unemployed. So what good are training programs to someone who loses his job and is unable to qualify for EI? What good are they to him if he cannot put food on the table?

The same goes for older workers. Once again, the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is using twisted logic and looking for a link that is not there. I am thinking, for instance, of the older workers in certain regions. In my riding, the region of Saint-Michel-des-Saints experienced massive layoffs when two businesses closed. Workers aged 58 and over will not find other jobs, so what will become of them? They will be condemned to poverty, despite all they have contributed to the economy and to Canadian and Quebec society. I see that as totally ungrateful, unfair and illegal.

[The Budget, February 3rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate on the budget introduced by the Minister of Finance last week. I am pleased not because there is anything worthwhile in the budget—as I will explain later—but because I really feel like we, my Bloc Québécois colleagues and I, are doing the work for which we were elected to this House on October 14, 2008. This work includes serving as a barrier to the Conservative Party's right-wing ideology.

I would like to take a moment to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, who, I can say, is about as far from being a Conservative as one can get.

I truly believe that our work here is a direct result of the October 14 election, in which Quebeckers once again decided to elect a large majority of Bloc Québécois members to defend their values and interests in this House. If the Conservative government had won a majority, the Minister of Finance's economic statement would have been passed, without any qualms, by the Conservatives. Instead, as we saw, the economic statement sparked a massive outcry from Quebeckers and Canadians alike.

We now have before us a budget that proposes a few minor concessions that do not, in our opinion, justify our support. However, we must recognize that if this had been a majority government, the damage would have been much worse. In that respect, I think we should congratulate the voters of Quebec for their success in preventing a Conservative majority. As I mentioned, today and over the past few days, we have been doing the work—and we will continue to do it—for which Quebec voters elected a majority of Bloc Québécois members.

I want to point out that, since the election, actions on the part of the Prime Minister and his government have demonstrated a deep misunderstanding of what Quebec wants and what Quebeckers are striving for. A number of motions that were passed unanimously in Quebec's National Assembly were completely ignored, particularly in the November 18 throne speech. We must not forget that. This budget is part of a sequence of events. Given the reaction to the November 18 throne speech, the November 27 economic statement, the throne speech delivered early last week, and last Tuesday's budget, we expected to see the government make some progress toward understanding what Quebeckers want, which is also, I believe, what a good many Canadians want. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

When the throne speech was delivered on November 18, we realized that we would once again have to deal with announcements that ran counter to the message Quebeckers delivered during the October 14 election. Take, for example, the young offenders legislation. We all know that when the Prime Minister announced during the campaign that he intended to make the young offenders legislation tougher, there was an outcry in Quebec. I do not think I am exaggerating. Not only was there strong opposition from the Bloc Québécois and Quebeckers, but the other opposition parties also spoke out against the idea of clamping down on young offenders, particularly to the extremes the Prime Minister proposed.

Another example is giving more powers to Quebec in the areas of culture and communications. The government's position in the throne speech was diametrically opposed to Quebeckers' desire to take control of those areas. Another issue is the elimination of the federal spending power. The Prime Minister made that promise during the 2005-06 election campaign, but still has not delivered on it. Furthermore, the government limited that initiative to shared-cost programs, which practically no longer exist, as everyone knows. Once again, there seems to be no will to eliminate the federal spending power. And once again, the government is attacking Quebec's securities commission.

Consequently, not only did the throne speech not meet Quebeckers' expectations, it went in the completely opposite direction. Furthermore, there was nothing in the throne speech about the economic crisis.

The outcry that ensued in Quebec and Canada led the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance to announce that an economic statement would be presented on November 27, if my memory does not fail me.

I do recall that, on November 24, the Bloc Québécois presented a two-year recovery plan requiring several billion dollars and containing a certain number of measures for the manufacturing sector, for example. They had 14 well-defined measures. There were also provisions for retirees and older workers as well as improvements to the employment insurance system. It was a recovery plan costing in the order of $23.5 billion, around $25 billion, which was therefore within the acceptable range even in the eyes of the Conference Board of Canada and organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. This recovery plan provided tangible measures to address Quebeckers' concerns and, in my opinion, the concerns of the majority of Canadians.

What was in the economic statement? Absolutely nothing except for a few announcements about types of assistance for banks, with no conditions, you will recall. Once again, we wonder whether the money made available to banks to improve access to credit was really used for that purpose.

The Bloc Québécois, including my colleague, the finance critic, is determined to get to the bottom of this. What was this federal government assistance used for? In practical terms, households and small and medium-sized businesses do not seem to have had access to anywhere near the credit the federal government guaranteed. If memory serves, the government had announced nearly $200 million for each measure. Not only did the economic statement not deliver the goods, but it also attacked women's rights, public servants and democracy by threatening the political party financing program, which members will recall was a response to the sponsorship scandal. In so doing, the government opened the door to what we in Quebec call small brown envelopes, meaning that interest groups can not exactly buy, but can influence decisions.

That is what was in the economic statement, and it caused such an outcry and such frustration among the opposition parties that the idea of a coalition was born. In my opinion, the coalition would have been a much better solution than supporting a bad Conservative budget, as the Liberals have decided to do.

After the economic statement was tabled, the Prime Minister asked the Governor General to prorogue the House, which she did. Once again, we expected some sort of announcement in the weeks that followed, before the Prime Minister came back to the House with his throne speech. But no, all the irritants I mentioned are once again in the throne speech that was read early last week and the budget tabled last Tuesday.

For all these reasons, the Bloc Québécois has no choice and is duty-bound to vote against this budget, which does not address any of Quebeckers' concerns and goes against their aspirations. I will say it again: I believe that most Canadians feel that this budget has nothing for them.

I will give a few examples. Concerning employment insurance, we would have expected the Conservative government to seize the opportunity that has been handed to it. This crisis is extremely important and will be just as serious as the crisis in the early 1980s. It may even be more like the Great Depression endured in the 1930s. Thousands of people will lose their jobs through no fault of their own, contrary to what the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development says, and they will need financial support. We would have expected improvements to the employment insurance system, in particular the eligibility aspect. They have announced that they are adding five weeks. That is fine, but if a person is not eligible for employment insurance, those five weeks are worthless.

We also know that only between 27% and 30% of employment insurance claimants actually use all of their benefits. It is fine if they can benefit from these five weeks, and we hope they can, we are happy, but the real problem is with eligibility.

The fact that there is no income support program for older workers is another serious flaw. I would challenge the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to come to Quebec, tour the regions and defend the twisted logic she was spouting yesterday during question period when she said that people would rather stay at home with their feet up instead of working. Or, that older workers can all be retrained, which is completely false.

For all of these reasons, the Bloc Québécois, acting responsibly, will vote against this Conservative budget which is completely unacceptable. I will hold my tongue rather than use other words.