Mr. Speaker, I will certainly speak to Bill C-13, the 2006 budget implementation act.
I am pleased to speak immediately after the hon. member for Winnipeg North. I think she did a good job highlighting the entire issue we must consider in order to pass judgment on this budget.
In no way do I doubt the convictions of the hon. member for Winnipeg North, having heard her speak about the less fortunate a number of times now. I think she does this well with conviction and fairness.
However, as far as the budget is concerned, we do not share the same conclusions. At the end of her speech she mentioned a certain number of reasons why we do not share her conclusions in terms of the Canadian government's policies of withdrawal from the social safety net for the people she was referring to, namely the poorest in society.
Hon. members will recall the Canadian government's withdrawal from social housing, which is called affordable housing in Canada, when the Liberals were formed the government. This withdrawal occurred almost throughout their entire time in power. Nothing was invested in social housing. It was only in 2001 that the Liberal government gradually started putting money back into social housing. However, it was too late, the damage had been done. The current serious shortage in social housing is putting even greater pressure on the poor.
The same phenomenon occurred in employment insurance with the Canadian government's withdrawal and cuts to the programs. This puts a great deal of pressure on the poorest families, especially people who have the misfortune of losing their employment.
I will come back to that, but I wanted first to put this in perspective to show that in the current context I believe there is no guarantee the Liberals would do better than the Conservatives right now if they were in power. On the contrary, they showed us they were capable of the worst.
Now it is time to see whether the Conservatives are also capable of the worst. In that perspective, we have looked at whether the budget we want to implement with Bill C-13 provides us with anything positive.
We must consider it in terms of the mandate given to us by the Quebec electorate. This mandate is to defend, to the best of our ability, the interests of Quebeckers. All the better if the interests of all Canadians are defended at the same time.
The issue of fiscal imbalance is decidedly a major issue for Quebec. I believe it is a major issue for the rest of Canada, but we will speak for Quebec. Why? Because it is an issue that the Liberals refused to recognize in order to maintain their policy of disengagement with respect to the provinces and to Quebec. It was a case of maintaining this quite deplorable situation whereby the Canadian government recorded the surpluses and the provinces assumed the responsibilities.
We have before us a government that says it is prepared to examine the fiscal imbalance within ten months, or by February 2007. It says it is prepared to do whatever is necessary with the provinces to solve the problem. That is an interesting commitment.
Now let us look at the difficulties faced by farmers. How farmers have struggled these last few years, first to obtain recognition for the fact that they experience tremendous difficulties just to be able to survive, and then to feed their families and to keep their farms afloat. We know how quickly the rate of farm failures is rising.
Many farmers did not even have enough money to plant their crops this spring.
Now, a breath of fresh air is blowing across the land. It is not an ideal solution, granted, but it is welcome relief for farmers. The Bloc Québécois had a large hand this initiative, especially my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska, who worked hard to convince the Conservative government that it had to do something. As a result, the budget contains $1.5 billion in new money to support farm producers who are going through hard times.
As I mentioned earlier, $800 million will go to social housing. In 2001, the Liberals allocated $260 million. Today, $800 million in new funding is being invested in social housing. This is a positive step.
The additional infrastructure funding, the tax exemption for bursaries, the reduction in the excise tax for microbreweries and the $1 billion for post-secondary education are some other positive aspects of the budget. The Bloc Québécois feels that, in the current context, the budget does enough for the people we represent so that we can support it. Does it address every issue? No.
Mr. Speaker, I know that you take a special interest in the plight of the unemployed and the poor. Our colleague referred to this earlier. We must recognize that a number of huge commitments are missing from the budget. In the coming months, that is what we must focus on in order to correct this situation.
Let us talk about the unemployed. The Conservative Party made a promise to set up an independent fund so that the Canadian government would stop playing around with the fund to divert money—which the Liberals did. Over the past 12 years, $48 billion was misappropriated from the employment insurance fund.
Elsewhere, this behaviour would be described as theft. I will not say that, as it is not parliamentary. However, it is dramatic. On whose backs was this done? It was done on the backs of people whose employment insurance benefits were cut. This is one of the measures that made families poorer, as our colleague mentioned earlier. Who does this money belong to? It belongs to the workers and employers.
I say it often in this House and I will continue to say it until this injustice is corrected. It is scandalous. It is misappropriation of funds, in no uncertain terms. This money belongs to two groups, the workers and the employers. In addition, this money could have gone to help families.
This was the first measure the Conservative government made a commitment on. It has done nothing yet. We will have to hound it. It will have to deliver the goods to provide an independent fund.
The situation is the same with the income support program for older workers. At the moment, the collapse of our industries' infrastructure because of the entry of foreign goods has led to layoffs. Most importantly, the people hit by the layoffs are 55 and older. In the past, the Conservatives made a commitment in this regard. It must deliver the goods.
The Bloc Québécois has introduced Bill C-269 to improve the entire employment insurance program. When the time comes, I invite my colleagues in the House to support this bill. Why? Because it is the minimum in terms of responsibility and recognition we owe workers in order to come to their assistance. It is also a matter of justice for them.
My time is up, so I will stop here. I am prepared to respond in the time for questions.
