Mr. Speaker, it is with anger that I will speak this morning to support my party's proposal. I am angry because the speech delivered by the Prime Minister to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal is tainted with a dose of cynicism that is hurtful.
When the Prime Minister stated, as quoted in this document, that we have a duty to target, as a priority, the problems of a city, he should have referred to a region with 675,000 poor, which is twice as many as in all of Atlantic Canada, a region where one unemployed Canadian in seven lives. When the Prime Minister says we have a duty to target the problem as a priority, he should remember what his government did to the poor, who are found in very large numbers in Montreal, since he took office.
The fact is that his government did not target poverty, it targeted the poor. The employment insurance reform follows another UI reform. Together, these reforms will result in a shortfall of over $900 million for Quebec, almost $1 billion. In 2001, according to the government's own figures, the figure will reach $1.2 billion. Forty per cent of this $1.2 billion, that is at least $500 million per year, will be a huge shortfall in the fight against poverty in the Montreal region.
In other words, the government decided to target the deficit by making the poor pay, and since there is a large concentration of poor people in Montreal, the city's contribution to reduce the deficit is greater than that of a lot of others.
Have job creation projects been set up to make up for what is taken away from the poor?
We would have heard about them, because they made such a fuss over an $87 million loan. The attention given to this $87 million loan shows how little the government is doing in this city, in this area, which has the misfortune to hold the Canadian record for poverty.
I would like to add, for the benefit of my colleague in the Reform Party who spoke earlier, that separatism is not the cause of all this. I would like to remind him that in 1962-63, for example, there was a commission in Quebec, the Boucher Commission, which looked at poverty. It concluded that the leading cause of poverty was the weakness of the Quebec economy at that time.
What has federalism done since then, before there arose this nationalist movement of Quebecers, the majority of them raised in these poor neighbourhoods where these victims of poverty wanted to take control of their future? Anyone in Canada who fails to look at this aspect of the fight against poverty by Quebec's nationalist movement is missing the key to understanding a large part of the movement.
I spoke about the cost of unemployment insurance, the Liberal cuts, the Liberals' gift to Montreal. This year, the cost is $400 million and by the turn of the century, 1999, it will be $500 million.
The Prime Minister cannot stand up and say, even with a smile on his face: "We have a duty to give priority to the problem of a city where there are 675,000 people living in poverty". But that is not all.
If only the cuts were limited to unemployment insurance. But there were also large cuts in social transfer payments. These transfer payments were reduced by $7 billion over a period of two years, which leaves about $1.9 billion for the entire province of Quebec. Again, this means 40 per cent for the Montreal region, or more than $400 million.
This shortfall affects health care, education and social assistance. But the worst part is, and we cannot repeat this often enough,
this Canada social transfer includes a dimension that should be criticized loud and clear. This Canada that is so anxious to meet the needs of its population, this Canada is changing by reducing equalization. That is what is happening. And it will become increasingly obvious, because without the resources that belong to the Canadian state, the city of Montreal, the municipality and the region will have tremendous problems, even with the support of the Quebec government. That is why we want to have all our resources to deal with this situation.
I repeat, the Canada social transfer is bringing about fundamental changes. Unfortunately, every recession sees an increasing number of people who must rely on social assistance to survive. This social assistance was 50 per cent funded by the Canada assistance plan.
With the Canada social transfer that is no longer the case. When the conditions are renegotiated, something that is still pending because of pressure from other provinces, especially Ontario which also has a comparatively high poverty rate, and we understand those pressures, what will happen? The government will want to relegate Quebec to a role based on its population. Here again, Quebec will be alone in bearing the additional load of new welfare recipients who will arrive in a steady stream, since we know there will be another recession, especially with the economic measures to reduce the deficit, because these cuts are the result of offloading the deficit on the provinces, on Quebec and Montreal.
It is outrageous. I repeat, because of these changes, the deficit will be fought at the expense of the poorest in our society. What happens to the surplus in the unemployment insurance fund? What happens to this adjustment? People are talking about tax cuts for everyone, including the rich.
That makes no sense at all. People in Quebec were already talking about what the federal government did not do, but they said that at least they had more unemployment insurance and social assistance. From now on, even that will no longer be true. For many people, sovereignty was not the only option. But increasingly, that is changing, and it is high time it did.