BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS DISSENTING OPINION

REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

"PRODUCTIVITY WITH A PURPOSE: INCREASING THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF CANADIANS"

Having read the Report of the Liberal majority, the Bloc Québécois wants to begin by expressing its agreement with the Liberal observation that there is at the present time in Canada a serious problem with productivity and with the way productivity is measured, a situation that is by all appearances likely to get worse in the coming years. The Bloc supports the recommendation in paragraph 167 of the Liberal Report; although we are of the opinion of that such a measure should have been put forward long before now, it is still a recommendation with promise. The Bloc also wants to note the Report's excellent attempt to define the concept of productivity.

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT BASED ON PRIVATE-SECTOR STANDARDS

However, the Bloc Québécois wishes to express its very strong disagreement with the idea of the "productivity covenant" proposed by the Liberals and contained in the Report. The concept of the covenant was introduced last December when the Liberal majority's pre-budget report was tabled. It is our opinion such an initiative, although it would put an end to a number of federal programs that encroach on areas of provincial jurisdiction, would also have disastrous consequences for the management of public finances.

" ... this Covenant should subject all existing government initiatives (spending, taxation and regulation) to an assessment which evaluatestheir expected effects on productivity and hence the standard of living of Canadians."

The Bloc Québécois considers that introducing such a productivity covenant would represent a real danger for social, environmental and even cultural policies, since by definition these policies are not necessarily "profitable" in a strictly economic sense. Their impacts on productivity are extremely difficult to measure and would seem to require a certain degree of subjectivity. A number of programs resulting from these policies would thus run the risk of being eliminated, on the basis of a coldly rational and academic concept from which all human considerations have been abstracted.

Does this mean the disappearance of the charges levied on business, on the ground that such charges increase their production costs?

At the Kyoto Summit on global warming, Canada's position was already regarded as the bare minimum by contrast with that of Quebec; in the framework of a productivity covenant, would Ottawa's position not have been even weaker? Again in the framework of such a covenant, would the government ever have introduced Bill C-55?

It is clear to us that it would be abnormal for the management of public finances to be based solely on the criterion of productivity, in the manner of private enterprise.

TAX REFORM REQUIRED

The Bloc Québécois is happy see that the Liberals themselves recognize, on page __ of their report, that the businesses and residents of Quebec and Canada must cope with federal tax rates that are much too high. Tax rates affect business productivity directly. Given the steady growth of federal surpluses, and with a view to improving productivity, the Bloc Québécois proposes once again that a real reform of the tax system be undertaken and that it target a reduction of taxes for middle income earners and small and medium-sized businesses, the two groups that have borne the cost of putting Canada's public finances on a sounder footing in the past few years.

THE SCANDAL THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO COVER UP

Finally, the Bloc Québécois cannot sit by and say nothing while the Liberal majority attempts in the most contemptible way to praise one of the worst program reforms and to camouflage reality. We are referring here to the employment insurance program.

The Liberal majority Report dares to assert, on page __, that it is changes in the structures of the economy that are responsible for the exclusion of an increasing proportion of the unemployed from employment insurance benefits. In fact it is the successive reductions in the program's accessibility, brought about by the Liberals, that have resulted in there being only about 40% of the unemployed who have access to employment insurance, as against 65% when the Liberals first came to power. To assert the contrary, as the majority Report does, is to display an unusual degree of intellectual dishonesty.