Roger Pomerleau

[The Budget, March 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is of course directed to the Minister of Finance.

For two years, the Bloc Quebecois asked for an in-depth review of the corporate tax system. The minister has finally decided to act by setting up a technical committee to look at the issue.

How can the minister think that an in-depth review of corporate tax can be conducted behind closed doors by a select group of experts, with no parliamentarian taking part in this exercise?

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have just one small question.

Last year in the House Quebec started to be blamed for Canada's economic situation, and this is sure to continue in the months to come, and people began to point their fingers at the sovereignist movement.

I would like to point out to my hon. colleague that there is a sovereignist movement in Taiwan, which is not in Canada. There are 51 elected sovereignist members in Taiwan who want to be sovereign from China and no one talks about economic insecurity in Taiwan. On the contrary, people want to do business there.

The Canadian political situation is not responsible for the insecurity we have here, it is the Canadian debt.

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the minister for his nice speech full of fine words which started off with great flights of poetry.

The minister used a quotation to tell us, among other things, that the Great Lakes represent 18 per cent of the world's fresh water supply. We know that there are thousands of chemicals in the Great Lakes. We know that the fish are dying, that birds that eat these fish end up with crooked beaks and crooked legs. It is polluted water, not fresh water.

Granted, these lakes contain 18 per cent of fresh water supplies, but it is certainly not drinking water.

The minister told us about the numerous bills he will table in this House. We will examine them, of course, according to their merit, as they are tabled. I would like to ask him a question, since he is making many commitments here today. I would like to ask him if he is willing to make real ones, not nice promises, but real commitments. We know about the Irving Whale , which has been at the bottom of the river for many years. My colleague the minister knows very well that, qui va piano va sano e va lontano , as the saying goes in his mother tongue.

But in that case, we are getting absolutely nowhere. Last year, $12.5 million were spent trying to refloat it. I would like the minister to commit to pass on the $12.5 million bill not to taxpayers, but to the Irving company. That is the issue.

[English]

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened carefully to the comments of my colleague, and I have a question for her. I am not very familiar with House procedure, but I do know that according to the statutes prorogation means all bills die on the Order Paper.

The government knows it. This has always been the case since there is a government. The government is free to prorogue or not, but it knows very well that when it does, all bills automatically die on the Order Paper. This very government, when it was sitting on the opposition benches, was very critical of the Conservative government because it did not abide by the rules of this House.

How can the government take such a position now? Is the hon. member trying to tell us that the government is free to ignore our

procedures for the sake of convenience? That is the fundamental question. Do we have procedures or do we not? My colleague is telling me procedures can be changed-and I agree with her-but let the government change them, then. But as long as they stand as they are, it should not ignore them just because it is more convenient. That is the fundamental question.

[Social Housing, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. Will the minister admit that this apparent will to decentralize is only a budgetary scheme designed to offload onto the provinces, with no financial compensation, the responsibility for 1.2 million Canadian households desperately in need of social housing units?

[Social Housing, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. In his speech from the throne, the Governor General described as a conciliatory measure the federal government's withdrawal from the social housing sector. This is just nonsense of course, since, in its last budget, the government had already put a stop to any new initiative regarding social housing.

Are we to understand that the government is about to propose to Quebec a partnership in an area that does not come under its jurisdiction, in which it does not invest any money, but regarding which it intends to maintain national standards that are ill-suited to Quebec's needs?

[Speech From The Throne, February 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to point out to my colleague, who talks about people with clouded minds, that we should look at Quebec from another angle. I heard my colleague talk about the small country that Quebec would be.

We can compare pare Quebec to other countries in the world, Israel, in particular. Israel is a country with a population of about 3.5 million Jews, without any natural resources, and surrounded by 220 million Arabs. It is 74 times smaller than Quebec. Quebec is not small. People should stop saying that.

I take another example, Singapore. Everyone is trading with Singapore, everyone wants to do business with Singapore. Singapore has a population of about 4 million people, and a total area of 651 square kilometres. It is 2,500 times smaller than Quebec. Let us stop talking about Quebec being small and start talking about

real things. Quebec is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of its territory.

Second, some people talk about isolation. They would like to build a fence around Quebec. Every time we talk about making Quebec a sovereign country, they say we want to cut ourselves off. I would like to quote from an article published quite recently in the economic section of La Presse , on February 5, 1996. What I am going to quote was written by an American university professor, Kenneth Holland. This article appeared in Quebec Studies and was done at the University of Memphis, in Tennessee. He is not a member of the Parti Quebecois or the Bloc Quebecois.

What does he say about Quebec? He says: "The unwavering support given by Quebec to free trade with the United States at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was the catalyst that made possible the remarkable chain of events that changed forever the global trade system".

It is all very well to talk about people wanting to isolate themselves. And by the way, the comparison he makes with Ontario certainly does not reflect well on that province. Quebec has always been open to all markets, and there would be no North American Trade Agreement today if Quebec had not been on side.

I do not see a society that wants to cut itself off but a society that is as open as can be. The hon. member asked why we did not think it was worth being part of the Canadian federation? The reason is that we are a political minority. Even if all Quebecers voted to send members to this House, we would never be able to form a government. Every time the interests of Quebec clash with Canada's, as often happens, we will always be on the losing side. That is what Quebecers realized in the last election. That is why they sent the Bloc Quebecois here, to get real power, as much as they could get in this Parliament, because we cannot form the government in this Parliament. We are a minority. Which means what? It means that when Canadians decide, for a number of very good reasons that are in line with the interests of Canada, to make decisions for all Canadians that go against the interests of Quebec, they can never prevent that.

Earlier, someone mentioned political uncertainty as one of the factors responsible for the current economic decline affecting us. First of all, this political uncertainty was created in 1982 by the patriation of the Constitution. This is not an attempt to dredge up past events, it is the truth: the contract that united this country was torn up, and Quebec was excluded from the Canadian Confederation. That is where the political uncertainty started.

I think we should look at all that in the light of these new factors. Quebec is not a small territory. It is an immense territory. It is not a

closed society. It is a society that is opening up, a society that will go the full democratic route to do what all other peoples in the world have done: become a country.

[Bank Act, November 24th, 1995]

Yes, as a matter of fact. Well, there will be no decentralization, but the fact remains that the Prime Minister indicated to Quebecers there would be some decentralization.

Does my colleague not agree basically, if we consider the situation in a simple and rational manner instead of an emotional manner, that Canada needs to have all his powers in Ottawa, that Quebec feels that its powers should be centralized in Quebec City, and that any attempt to transfer powers from Ottawa to Quebec is bound to fail?

[Bank Act, November 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I note our hon. colleague has just said, and, very much to the point, I think, that the aim of the bill was never to invade Quebec's jurisdiction, and I believe him. I do not think the ministers opposite and our Liberal colleagues spend their time trying to think of ways to create bills to invade Quebec's jurisdictions.

That is absolutely true. I think their aim is probably to come up with good bills that will apply to all Canadians, in Canada's best interest. I am not questioning this, but the effect of the bill is to invade Quebec's jurisdictions-there is no way round it. Even Daniel Johnson, a Quebec federalist, agrees.

All this, because, on the whole, Canada is pursuing an orderly and intelligent course of development, which obliges it to centralize its powers. Mr. Trudeau recently stated that Canada cannot be decentralized any more than it is, because it is the most decentralized confederation.

Clearly, in order to become a strong country, Canada must centralize its powers in Ottawa, and this is in fact what the government is doing.

The effect of this centralization of powers in Ottawa is to rob Quebec of its powers. This is Canada's big problem. We have two sets of jurisdiction pursuing different interests for the most part. This has not been so obvious until now, because the Quebecers we sent to the House were lost in parties like the Conservative or the Liberal Party, where they were in the minority and where they were entitled to speak in the House only to toe the party line.

Now there is the Bloc Quebecois, which truly represents the interests of Quebecers and is truly in keeping with Quebec's history. This position is being defended not only by the sovereignists, but has been defended by events in Quebec since 1950 and earlier. The position has been defended by Quebec's premiers, whatever their political stripe-federalist or sovereignist.

There was Maurice Duplessis, who said, on Quebecers' behalf, "Rendez-moi mon butin à Ottawa", calling for the return of the province's powers, and he got them too. There was Jean Lesage, who started the Quiet Revolution, and talked of "Maîtres chez nous". What did he mean? He realized we did lack some of the tools we needed for our development. Then there was Daniel Johnson, Sr., who said "Égalité ou indépendance", and yet he was not a sovereignist. Toward the end of his term of office, he realized that it was absolutely necessary for Quebec to retain its powers and-if possible-obtain new ones for its economic and political survival. In this ever-changing political environment, René Lévesque managed to launch the sovereignist movement. This movement is still influential; it has led to the presence in this House members of the Bloc Quebecois, which is representative of Quebec.

Of course, there are representatives of Quebec within the Liberal Party. But these are isolated cases. Quebec is represented by the Bloc quebecois. I know that Canada needs to centralize its powers. I would like to ask my colleague a simple question. Does not he think that it is time-I know that the Prime Minister has said or at least implied, maybe not to us, but to Quebecers, that he might decentralize Canada or some minor services, when we know perfectly well-

[Bank Act, November 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank the hon. member for Jonquière, who in my estimation made a good analysis which, along with the one made this morning by another Bloc member, clearly illustrates the problems with Bill C-100. There are several problems which affect Quebec but, more importantly, this bill is yet another example of federal interference in an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

The hon. member pointed out that, almost every time a bill is introduced in the House, Bloc Quebecois members rise to condemn the fact that it infringes on an area of provincial jurisdiction. This is a rather recent phenomenon here. Indeed, in the last 15 or 20 years, there have been Quebec MPs in this House who were not Bloc members but who rarely got up to condemn federal interference in areas which come under Quebec's jurisdiction.

This is explained by the fact that, whenever Quebecers were represented here, it was by Conservative or Liberal members who were in a minority position and who had to toe the party line within their caucus. Since their caucus was formed by a majority representing the rest of Canada, they had to defend the interests of Canada before those of Quebec. This applied even when there was an obvious consensus in Quebec, that is when federalists and sovereignists of all political colours were of the same opinion.

The hon. member just mentioned the fact that Daniel Johnson sent a letter to the minister, in which he described precisely our position. Therefore, there is obvious consensus on Bill C-100, among federalists and sovereignists alike in Quebec, with respect to this intentional intrusion on matters of provincial jurisdiction, and I hope that the government will take this into account.

Another obvious example of consensus in Quebec being ignore by the government is the fact that manpower training and everything connected with manpower training should be handed over to Quebec. Every political party and all of the stakeholders in Quebec, be it management or labour, obviously agree on this, yet the federal government is not responding. We in the Bloc Quebecois have every right to defend these positions.

It is a well known fact that movements such as the Parti Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois were born as a result of the realization that we were a political minority. And when we played the power game, whether within the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party, we remained a minority and, as such, had to defend Canada's interests. This the origin of the emergence of the sovereignist movement in Quebec; we realized that we were caught in an ongoing process of being reduced to a political minority.

My question to my colleague, who has studied several pieces of legislation similar to Bill C-100, is: does he not realize that, for several years now, we have tried to explain to our fellow citizens what being a political minority means, and that, to a certain extent, being a political minority leads to becoming an economic minority, and that, when we deal with Quebecers, we should add this dimension to our debate?