THE MODERATOR: Good evening, I'm Ann Medina. Welcome to the 1997 Leaders' Debate coming to you live from the Government Conference Centre here in Ottawa.

There are five party leaders participating tonight. They are Jean Chrétien, leader of the Liberal Party; Jean Charest, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party; Preston Manning, leader of the Reform Party; Alexa McDonough, leader of the New Democratic Party; and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

Tonight, these five leaders will be giving opening and closing statements. They will be answering questions from a panel of journalists and from an audience, and, most importantly, they will be debating each other.

The main part of the evening will be divided into five sections with each section devoted to a particular theme. Journalists will introduce the five themes, the leaders will then debate the topic, and finally, in each section, members of our audience will ask their own questions.

A note about the debates: The parties have agreed that the debating sections would be best served if they were as unrestricted as possible. My role, therefore, will not be to intervene with a stop watch; however, in the interests of fairness and balance, I have been asked to intervene in the following situations: If a leader has been trying for a period of time to make a point or to respond to a criticism and has been unable to do so, and if the discussion becomes such that no one can hear or understand what's being said. So those are the rules, and that's the format that has been agreed to by all five parties.

Also, for your information, whenever the leaders are given a time limit, a light signals to them when they have 30 seconds remaining, when they have ten seconds left, and when their time is up. I do hope they will honour it. I hate to interrupt, but that's my assigned task if they tiptoe over the line.

Finally, in every case where there is an order of appearance, a drawing has been held. So that gives you a sense of what is coming up tonight. Now, let's begin with the opening statements.

Alexa McDonough, leader of the New Democratic Party, will go first.

MS McDONOUGH: Thank you very much for tuning in. Tonight you are about to hear two very different visions for Canada's future. On this side, the three gentlemen on my right have all supported huge cuts to education, to health care, and to other important national programs. By their actions, they have shown that jobs are not the priority.

These views have dominated Parliament since 1993, and it's been a very lopsided debate with the Bloc pursuing its own narrow destructive agenda and ignoring the real issues. I'm here tonight to say it doesn't have to be that way. There is a better way.

We all want to balance the budget but New Democrats want to balance the budget at a much lower level of unemployment. Politics is about choices and, if the government can set and meet targets to reduce the deficit, they can darn well set and meet targets to cut unemployment in half.

We're fighting to protect education for our children, health care for our families, security for seniors, instead of big tax breaks and more tax cuts for banks, big corporations, and the wealthy. We should reward businesses that create jobs, but we have to stop the give-aways to those who don't. We have to protect our environment and our culture for the benefit of all of us, but, above all else, we have to provide hope for Canadians.

So tonight, let's talk about choices, opportunities and about hope.

THE MODERATOR: Jean Chrétien, leader of the Liberal Party.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. This election is about choices, values and priorities for the Canada of the 21st century. This is a time to debate ideas. This is what democracy is all about.

We have set out very clearly our choices: An economy that creates jobs through a balanced budget and low interest rates, preserving and modernizing health care, investing in children, particularly poor children, investing in knowledge innovation, education, technology and trade and strengthening the unity of Canada.

In 1993, we started off with a $42 billion deficit. Our economy was in decline, and hope for the future was very low. Soon, we will have a balanced budget. This is not just the accomplishment of a government; it is the accomplishment of the Canadian people.

Now is our chance as a country to build on that success. We have put forward a plan that is responsible, balanced, practical, fair, and moderate in keeping with the values of Canadians, and we appeal to what unites Canadians, not what divides us. The unity of our country is a very precious thing, too important to play dangerous games with.

We must always appeal to the best in people, and I welcome the chance to speak to Canadians tonight about securing our future together. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Preston Manning, leader of the Reform Party.

MR. MANNING: Good evening Canadians, and thank you for joining us. Tonight you will hear from the various federal political parties their positions on key issues of importance to you -- jobs, taxes, crime, social safety nets, unity, accountability -- but what I hope you will also see emerge as two very different views on the role of the federal government.

The old view represented by the traditional parties, the old parties, sees a big high spending federal government as the primary source of jobs and social security. It's a view that is not working, that has resulted in high taxes, in high unemployment, in high debt, and high anxiety levels.

A new vision will be presented by Reform that replaces the big expensive government with a smaller and more focused government that leaves more dollars in your pockets and that sees government as having its primary purpose in supporting you, your family and your community.

The old-line parties also believe that the way to keep Canada together -- and we have to think about how to keep Canada together -- is to grant special status to some Canadians, including distinct society status for the province of Quebec. Reform believes that the key to unity is to treat all citizens and provinces equally, and tonight I hope to show you how you can achieve both unity and diversity by using that formula.

At the end of this debate, I will challenge you to make a choice: Do you want more of the same, a big government, high taxes, a special status approach to unity, or do you want a fresh start, smaller government, lower taxes, and equality for all citizens and provinces? The choice is yours. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Dear friends, in October, 1993, Quebeckers decided to send a strong contingent of sovereignist MPs to Ottawa. They decided to give themselves a voice in the House of Commons, a voice which would speak for all Quebeckers and for Quebec. In fact, the Bloc has been and continues to be a strong voice with ideas like job creation, strategy, and its proposals for fighting poverty.

But just as importantly, by electing the Bloc, the Quebec people stated clearly its conviction that it is impossible to reform Canada in its interest. For many years, Quebeckers have claimed more powers for the government in Quebec City. We now know that this is no longer feasible. More and more Quebeckers are convinced that the only solution is the sovereignty of Quebec and a new partnership with Canada.

We propose a constructive project, not a destructive one, a project which will allow Canadians and Quebeckers to build two countries on a basis of an equal partnership.

For the Bloc Quebecois, sovereignty is a certainty. It is the normal progression of a people towards its full affirmation. We are closer than ever to our goal, and I firmly believe that sovereignists' support will come out on top in the next referendum. I sincerely hope that both Quebeckers and Canadians will prepare for this event seriously and in the respect of our democrative values. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Jean Charest, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Good evening. Tonight is an important opportunity for you to compare leaders and plans and decide which one can help you best achieve your goals. The quality of leadership matters. The right kind of leadership can help you improve your future. Without it, government can make us all lose ground.

In the last election campaign, our party received a message loud and clear. Since then, I've been listening, learning, working hard to offer Canadians a national alternative. I'm offering a new plan for our future, one which is focused, frugal and will work.

How will it help? Our plan will cut taxes right away. If you are working hard, you deserve a higher standard of living, not bigger taxes. If you're looking for work, you deserve a government determined to find new ways to help. High taxes kill jobs; lower taxes will help create more jobs.

This country can afford to cut taxes now. We can and should make this choice. Our plan will help provide a bold new health care guarantee. Federal cuts have created chaos in our health care system. We have to change direction and restore peace of mind.

Finally, I want to be Prime Minister to build a new coalition of Canadians, a coalition ready to move forward together. Whether you live in Calgary, in Chicoutimi or Come By Chance, I also want us to make this country work. Canadian are looking for leadership that will make Canada work. This is a choice we can and must make. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you all. We now turn to the five various themes of the evening to be introduced through questions from our panel of journalists. They are Jason Moscovitz from CBC News; Craig Oliver from CTV News; and Peter Kent from Global Television. In each section, a journalist will ask one of the leaders an initial question on a given theme, and the other four leaders will also give a timed response. The journalist will then ask that same leader a second question, and, after a brief answer, the other leaders will be free to jump in, and the debate begins.

The first theme to be debated is jobs, and I will ask Peter Kent to address the first question to Preston Manning.

MR. KENT: Well, the jobs issue is a key part of every election campaign, but there's no doubt that this time it is Issue One. Canadians without jobs and very little prospect of employment are angry and desperate. Those who do have jobs, many of them under-employed, are insecure and anxious.

Given the scepticism, even cynicism, among voters that any of you can create large numbers of meaningful new jobs, what is your program, Mr. Manning?

MR. MANNING: I think the key to your question is you say we create jobs, or can we create jobs, and I think what we have here is a big choice between two alternative approaches as to how jobs are created.

The conventional thinking in Ottawa -- it's been espoused by the three traditional parties for a long time -- is that big governments can create jobs; that they take money from taxpayers, they take it to Ottawa, take an administrative bite out of it and spend it on so-called job creation. What that has done is give us 1.4 million unemployed, under-employed, and many people concerned about jobs.

The other alternative to leave more dollars in the pockets of taxpayers to spend, consumers to spend, and businesses to invest. And we think it's about high time we tried that alternative approach, so we have this fresh start approach on jobs that balances the federal budget first and then delivers broad-based tax relief, about $15 billion per year in tax relief by the year 2000. It creates more jobs, if you run it through the big computers that we use to measure these things, than anything that's been proposed by the government or by Mr. Charest..

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Manning. Alexa McDonough.

MS McDONOUGH: First of all, we have to set and meet targets to reduce jobs the same way we have set and met targets to reduce the deficit. We haven't done that. We haven't seen that kind of concentrated approach for three and a half years with this government.

We've got to recommit to education and to research and development. We have to reinvest in the economy. You can't shrink your way to prosperity, and that means that the public sector has to stop the cuts because they have already, with their first round of cuts, eliminated 400,000 jobs, and it means we have to get the private sector investing again as well. It means we have to get banks to reinvest in the communities where people have entrusted their deposits to those banks.

It means we have to rebalance work opportunities between the overworked and the unemployed, a third of the workforce not able to get in to the workforce at all, and a third of people overworked, killing their own health, killing their family life, killing their opportunity to participate in the community. Surely it's a failure of leadership not to tackle this issue.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: We're proposing an eight-point strategy to create employment, to modify the tax corporate system to be able to recover $3 billion to be used to encourage businesses to create jobs, also to decrease the unemployment insurance premiums by 35 cents.

We're also asking the government to focus on unemployment in the economic sector where the presence of the federal government has a significant influence.

Also, the creation of an RRSP employment program, because we're facing more and more autonomous workers, and we want them to be able to use that money in the RRSP to create their own jobs. More and more people are facing that situation of unemployment and are creating their own jobs.

We want also to return all the manpowers into the hands of provinces, because even with the agreements signed with Quebec, there is still $500 million in Ottawa that should be returned to Quebec and to other provinces also.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Our objective must be that every Canadian who wants to work can kind find a job. When I became Prime Minister, the country was almost bankrupt. We had a $42 billion deficit, and the deficit was killing jobs, so we had to put order into in the situation.

Canadians made great efforts, and today we have a budget that will be in soon balance, and that has created low interest rates, and low interest rates help investment and help people who are buying housing and cars and so on.

We have been working very hard to export the Canadian goods and services abroad through Team Canada, and today, we realize that, in the last two months, 93,000 jobs have been created. We are on the right track. We have to make sure that the people pull together.

It's not easy, but if we maintain what we're doing, that will create jobs because these are the things needed -- an economy that can compete with anybody in the world.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, here's an area where the broken promises of the Liberal government hurts Canadians the most. The truth of the matter is we're experiencing today the highest period of high unemployment we've had since the 1930s. Youth unemployment is at a record level. In fact, there were 72,000 jobs lost for 15- to 24-year-olds in the last year; yet we have parents who have kids at home who have diplomas and don't have a job or prospect of a job.

This government seems to have thrown in the towel. In fact, there's worse than that. They're imposing a $5 billion tax on jobs through the employment insurance system.

There are four things I want to do for the country: A, cut payroll taxes to reduce the cost of creating a job. Reduce personal income taxes so we that we can afford more consumption and Canadians can go out and spend.

Secondly, I want to bring down interprovincial trade barriers.

Three, a stronger emphasis on national leadership on education and training.

Five, eliminate the regulatory burden.

These five things, these areas of concern, will help us create more jobs in our economy.

MR. KENT: Mr. Manning, you contend that government has little if any role in direct job creation, but what about those profitable Canadian companies, some with consecutive record profits, that are still eliminating jobs? How would you deal with them?

MR. MANNING: I think you want your tax relief to go in the areas where it will generate the most jobs, and where that will go is you give tax relief to consumers. Our fresh start platform delivers a great deal of tax relief to consumers to spend, and also to lower and medium-sized businesses who, when they invest, do create jobs.

If you target your tax relief in the proper area, you can increase your job status. I think the issue that's going to have to be dealt with here, and I challenge Mr. Chrétien on this, you made this promise last time -- jobs, jobs, jobs -- and we have the 1.4 million unemployed. These are not just statistics, these are real people, dashed hopes, dashed dreams, and I do not see from what I've heard you say in the House of Commons that you have an understanding of how a job is actually created in the modern economy.

And I think you owe it to Canadians to show and tell them how do you see a job created into today's economy, because we happen to need a couple of million of them.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, in the House of Commons, we debated a lot, and we always said that what was important was to have the fundamental rights. We inherited a huge deficit. In the last five years of the Tory administration, they created 120,000 jobs. In the last three years and seven months, the Canadian economy has created 793,000 new jobs.

MR. MANNING: I'm asking how does a job come into being? How does it gets created? Does it get created through government infrastructure?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: If there's one thing that's quite clear, I do think the Prime Minister has spent a lot of time in the House of Commons, but as we saw in the town hall meetings in December, I don't think the Prime Minister Mr. Chrétien realizes that there are a lot of Canadians suffering out there in Atlantic Canada and the west who don't have jobs.

In fact, he had choices to make. One of them was whether or not he'd use the employment insurance system for the purpose of reducing the deficit rather than reducing programs spending in Ottawa. He is now using, this government, the employment insurance system to the tune of $5 billion a year to offset the deficit, and that's the wrong choice because that is the worst tax you can impose on jobs in this country.

With all respect, I would cut that tax immediately and reinvest the $5 million into the economy, allowing Canadians to keep that money. That's the first positive thing that we could do that would create thousands of jobs.

MS McDONOUGH: The reality is, Mr. Charest, that your tax cut --

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: With the unemployment insurance premiums, you don't have any space to give better conditions to all those workers unemployed. The number of people unemployed who were eligible to unemployment insurance back in 1993 was 62 per cent. Now it's 34 per cent. That's why we're proposing to decrease the premiums by 35 cents and using the other part of $2.5 billion to make better conditions for those on unemployment.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Mr. Duceppe, let me just remind you the money we're talking about is the money taken off the paycheques of workers every week. It's their money. It belongs to them. They earn it. They worked for it. They deserve to keep that money. And that will reduce the cost of creating a job, which Mr. Chrétien refuses to do.

MS McDONOUGH: You ask us to consider that you've taken a balanced approach to jobs -- 1.5 million Canadians unemployed when you were elected Prime Minister, 1.5 Canadian unemployed today. Is that your idea of balance?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: The Canadian economy has created 795,000 jobs in the last three years and seven months, and of course there is more participation in the Canadian people, but we had to put order from the mess that Mr. Charest and his friends left to us.

MS McDONOUGH: We're talking about 1.5 million real people who need real jobs, that need to feed their families. It's not a question of statistics.

MR. MANNING: The question here is how does a job get created. If the public thought we knew how a job was created, they'd have a better chance to judge which policy will get us there.

You have two options. Are jobs created by you spending money through infrastructure programs? Is that the way? Or are jobs created by massive tax relief? How does a job get created.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, the infrastructure program, and everybody recognized that it was a great success. Every city, every provincial government, decided to use it to improve the infrastructure of the government.

We could not do only that. We have to put order in the finances of the nation. We had to eliminate the deficit that existed in the unemployment insurance fund that were left by us. He is talking about the premium. The Conservatives took the premium at $1.95, increased it to January 1994 at $3.30. We have, in our balanced approach, reduced it to $2.90, and we have at the same time invested in some job creation.

In the meantime, because the interest rates are going down, the private sector is investing. People are buying, as I said earlier. It's why these jobs are created. We had Team Canada going around the world selling goods and services --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Mr. Chrétien said a minute ago that the participation rate of Canadians was higher in the job market. That's not the case. The participation rate in '93 was 65.3 when he was elected; it's 64.8 right now.

The fact of the matter is that Mr. Chrétien has thrown in the towel, and that's what I find despairing. I travelled throughout the country. Canadians know that, yes, government can play a role. It starts by getting out of the way. It can play a constructive role, and by returning this money to Canadians will allow them to invest it, but we can do better than that. We can bring down interprovincial trade barriers, assert national leadership. These trade barriers cost us money, and they also cost us jobs. This government has not asserted that leadership.

We can also assert national leadership in the area of education and training to make things happen, but that's also part of what the national government --

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Charest, your tax cuts for the wealthy, and Mr. Manning's tax cuts for the wealthy --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: National standards is something that Canadians can agree to.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: You want national standards in the education field.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I am happy if I can talk. I think some people like to spend money, like the NDP who always propose to spend money. Now, this time, we have not finished winning the war on the deficit. We are two-thirds of the way. We're getting into the third period. It's not the time to proclaim victory.

Before we have a balanced budgeted you, the Conservative party and the Reform Party are promising trying to buy votes in promising tax cuts that are premature. I am in the middle, having the proper balance that creates the proper climate that creates jobs.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: You say we want to spend money. You want to spend $10 million on buying new art for the millennium. You spent $15 million on flags. You want to spend $2 million on a commissioner for aquaculture, yet you're saying to us there is no manoeuvring room to reduce taxes.

Let's be clear on one thing. There is the manoeuvring room, what Mr. Chrétien wants to do is increase spending.

MR. MANNING: You've not mentioned tax relief as a major mechanism for stimulating jobs. It's one your government doesn't even consider. Do you not believe that tax relief, after you've balanced the budget, will deliver you more jobs than anything you could do with those dollars?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I say first we have to balance the books.

MR. MANNING: That's what we say.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: And after that, we say that when we'll be in a surplus position, half of the surplus will go to work to put money in economic and social programs, because they are problems of that nature. Let me finish. And the other half will say it will go for tax cuts or for debt reduction.

MR. MANNING: But that means, if you believe that tax relief will create jobs and jobs is your number one priority, you'd balance the budget faster to get to that goal; does that not follow?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We have been so successful in doing that that we are one year and a half more advanced than we said in the last campaign we were to do. And we are $10 billion in a better position. But it's not the time to change the course, because this country is being praised by the IMF as the one that is doing the best in 1997-1998.

MS McDONOUGH: Your tax cuts for the wealthy and Mr. Charest's tax cuts for the wealthy are paid for by everybody else. They're paid for in reduced services, and they're paid for in lost jobs. It's not just NDP research. CIBC Wood Gundy have said that, as a result of cutting too far, too fast, we've eliminated 400,000 jobs -- decent jobs, well paid jobs. And you want to --

MR. MANNING: Bob Rae got thrown out of the Government of Ontario because union people in Ontario said what Bob Rae gave us made us think of pay day as tax day. He raised the taxes so high he got himself voted businessman of the year in Buffalo, New York.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Manning, I have no doubt that you'd like to talk about some other election and some other politicians. We're talking about the plan for jobs in this election.

MR. MANNING: He raised the taxes and killed jobs.

MS McDONOUGH: Your tax breaks are paid for by everyone else. Your capital gains tax break is giving a $40,000 benefit to someone earning over $250,000. To a family of four earning $20,000, a crumby, measly, miserable $107 tax break.

MR. MANNING: Not so.

MS McDONOUGH: Is that your idea of fairness? Straight from your platform.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: We need more equity in fiscality. I can't accept that capital gains are taxed at a rate of 75 per cent while an employment income is taxed at 100 per cent. There's a lot of loopholes also, and the Minister of Finance know that pretty well.

Someone who earns $60,000 a year will receive a 12.8 tax reduction; someone who earns $30,000 a year will receive a 3.8 tax reduction. It's a program made for the richest people.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Someone who earns $30,000 a year under our plan, after the first mandate, four years, will receive $2,000 in their pocket that they will be allowed to spend, but Mr. Chrétien wanted to make a statement. Let me share a statement of his that he made at this debate in 1993, and it goes this way: It's completely unacceptable that, in a country like Canada, 1.6 million people are unemployed, and 46 per cent of those who have jobs are afraid of losing them. For the first time in our history, parents believe that the future of our children will be less promising than their own. It's time for a change.

Mr. Chrétien said this in '93, and you know what? He's right. It's still time for a change.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We had to take over the mess that you left us, $42 billion, and this was pushing interest rates high. For every dollar that our governments were collecting, we had to pay 35 cents to pay the interest, and we were going down in the hole.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Chrétien, you said you would reduce the deficit by making jobs the number one priority. You said you would reduce the deficit by growing the economy, by creating jobs instead of laying off taxpayers.

THE MODERATOR: Here I'm going to intervene and declare the end of round one.

We now turn to the audience. As you can imagine, this is not a random group; rather, they were carefully selected by an independent research company to achieve a regional and demographic representation of the country. In addition, we are told that they do not belong to any political party and they haven't worked on either this election or the last one back in 1993.

Each questioner has been asked to address one and only one leader on the given theme, and to keep their questions brief.

Also, to the extent that it's possible, the producers will try to ensure that the questions are fairly distributed amongst the leaders by the end of all five sections, but ultimately it's the audience that determines which leaders are given the opportunity to answer questions.

Helping us in the audience are Donna Freisen, a reporter with CTV News, and Jacques Bourbeau, a reporter with Global Television.

MR. BOURBEAU: Our first question is from Debbie Hughes (ph) from Summerside, P.E,I., and she has a question for Jean Charest.

Q. Mr. Charest, one of the most important jobs that is often overlooked is staying home with your children to raise them. Do you have any plans for tax breaks to families with young children?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Well, the tax breaks that we are proposing in our plan, Debbie, are going to be tax breaks that we want to apply, as I was mentioning a little earlier, to the employment insurance system, which is a tax on jobs, the most detrimental tax you could impose on an employer or business person if they have a choice of creating jobs.

The second one is a reduction in personal income taxes of 10 per cent. The reason why we feel very strongly about that is because, in Canada, disposable income of Canadians, what you have left in your pocket, has been steadily going down for the last few years. In fact, in the United States, in the same period of time, it's gone up 11 per cent. In Canada, it's gone down 1 per cent. We feel it's very important we reverse that trend. In fact, let me tell you how urgent it is. If we don't, for the first time ever, we have will have a generation of young Canadians with a lower standard of living than that their parents.

Those are the two most immediate things we want to do, and hopefully that will go a long way in helping families with children start getting some more money in their pockets and spend more money.

MS FREISEN: This is Don Ward from Rupert, Quebec, and he has a question for Gilles Duceppe.

Q. Mr. Duceppe, as a fellow Quebecker, I can tell you exactly how to create a job. I do it daily. I'm self-employed.

What I'd like to understand is how your government proposes as an anglophone in Quebec with the atmosphere that is there now, how an anglophone self-employed can create and flourish in Quebec? What kind of help can I get? The banks look at me as a small business and unreliable for some reason. Can you help me out with this, please?

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Any woman or man living in Quebec is a Quebecker, independent if he's French, English, or coming from a minority, so they have the same rights. When you look at the situation among anglophones and francophones, you don't see that huge a difference. I would say that I'd like to see the rate of unemployment among anglophones compared to the francophone, so I don't see why the situation in Quebec would play against anglophones. I really don't see that.

If you're talking about political uncertainty, well, there's a lot of other countries which are not stable at all. Think of Mexico. We're dealing with Mexico. We're making commerce with Mexico. There's not such an instability in Quebec. Even last year, I would say there were more foreign investment, private investments, in Quebec than other provinces, not Canadian investment but investment from foreign countries.

So I don't see why an anglophone would have such a problem living in Quebec. I mean, if you compare the situation of the anglophones in Quebec with the francophone outside Quebec, there's no comparison at all, sir.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm with Robert Aljar (ph) from Nepean, Ontario, and he has a question for Jean Chrétien.

Q. Good evening, sir. As Mr. Charest said in his opening statement, and I agree with him, that lower taxes would result in more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians. This will reinvigorate the economy and create jobs. Since jobs are your top priority, are you willing to commit that, if elected to a second mandate, you will reduce the taxes to the 30 per cent level say over the next few years?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Thank you for your very good question. I say, sir, that first, we have to finish the job to have a balanced budgeted. And after that, half of the money that we'll have will be spent on social and economic programs that are needed, because we still have poverty in Canada and we still have economic problems in many parts of Canada, so we have to spend some money to help the economy to grow.

The second part of the money will go for tax reduction, and possibly, if we do very well, for debt reduction. We have done some tax reduction in last few years, but selective ones. For example, in the last budget, we have reduced the taxes by $850 million to go to the family with kids, families who are poor. We have reduced the taxes for the small business who hired new people. They don't pay any more the unemployment insurance contribution if it's a small business employing new people.

We have done it with many other sectors in a selective way to make sure that it's not across the board, giving a big break to only the rich and the big companies. We have to selected people who benefit most.

MS FREISEN: This is Michel Crouteau (ph) from Sept-Isles, Quebec, and he has a question for Preston Manning.

Q. Sir, there is more and more industrial countries who now understand that wide and drastic cuts of employees in the public and private sectors don't have the expected economical benefits. That kind of cuts destroy the economic growth and the buying power of consumers. The U.S.A. at last begins to understand that.

Is that kind of cuts over, and what will you do to stop companies who do that kind of cuts?

MR. MANNING: The ultimate aim for your question, and I thank you for question, is how are you going to get more jobs. Our view is you balance the budget faster than what Mr. Martin and Mr. Chrétien have been doing. Yes, that involves some reducing the size of federal government, but if you balance first and then deliver broad-based tax relief second, right on the heels of it -- we have a large tax relief package for consumers. We have a tax relief package for Debbie here that makes the tax system neutral with respect to child care, and we deliver tax relief to small businesses.

If you balance fast and deliver tax relief right on the heels of it, our view is that that creates more jobs than stretching out the balancing of the budget and giving the tax relief later on.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I'm sorry, but we're out of time for the questions, but there will be four more opportunities.

We'll now turn to our second theme, health care and social programs. Jason Moscovitz has a question, I believe, for Jean Charest.

MR. MOSCOVITZ: Good evening, Mr. Charest. In terms of medicare, we know that, to begin with, there's a lot of anxiety over jobs as we have just discussed, but Canadians are also very apprehensive about the future of medicare and social programs. Mr. Charest, your party and other parties here, you promised to preserve medicare, but the reality is that the provinces have more and more control of medicare.

With that in mind, how realistic are your promises on medicare?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Well, thank you, Jason, for the question, and yes, there's a great deal of anxiety about health care in the country. If there's something I've heard a lot about in the last three years, it's exactly that. There's a few reasons for that.

First of all, Canadians look at their system. They feel it isn't working. But the first reason why there's a lot of anxiety is because the Liberal government has slashed health care money, the money transfers to the provinces, 40 per cent. They did that unilaterally without consultation, without any plan, even after saying that they were going to guarantee the funding. And there's also a changing population. Our population is growing older with less people in our system.

I think what Canadians deserve, because this is a national asset, is a health care guarantee. It works this way: We put $1.4 billion more into health care. We stop the cuts immediately. Two, we negotiate with the provinces a health care guarantee based on the five principles of the Canada Health Act plus standards in exchange for which we transfer tax points over, only then, and, in exchange, they get $2 billion more at the end of our first mandate for health care and education. That's what Canadians deserve, a health care guarantee.

MS McDONOUGH: Well, I think the problem we know is that the Liberals have cut $7 billion, the Conservatives want to cut $12 billion, Reform wants to cut $15 billion, and we're already putting our social programs under intense pressure.

We've got to reinforce our medicare system by recognizing that the federal government has to maintain a commitment to it. And Jean Charest's plan would be to get out of cash to health and get into tax points exclusively, which lessens the ability of the federal government to have any really meaningful say over health care.

We've got to move forward with medicare. We've got expand it to provide for home care, to provide for prescription drugs. It's not just about spending more money either. The federal government knows perfectly well that they made a commitment to get out of Bill C-91, which is pumping money from the scarce health dollars into the profits of multinational pharmaceutical companies. We could be redirecting that money into a pharmacare program for all Canadians.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: I have listened to the 1993 debate, and Mr. Chrétien was saying that he wouldn't touch social programs. What he did last year and this year is cutting $4.5 billion to the transfer payments to the provinces. What we're asking is that the federal government should inject the necessary money into social transfers so that the provinces could face the problems they have in health care and post-secondary education and social assistance, but it's always the same rationale with Ottawa. You're making the decision, and then you're forcing the provinces to face huge problems. We're asking you to stop that, to stop imposing national standards and to reinject the money you cut in the last two years.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, social solidarity is a fundamental characteristic of Canada, and I'm very proud over my career that I've been part of government that have brought medicare, the guaranteed income supplement, child tax credits, Canada Pension Plan, and many others. But when we formed the government, we were faced with a situation of bankruptcy, and we had to do something. Of course we have cut transfer payments, and we have cut everybody. We have cut transfer payments less than when we have cut the government. But we have, as soon as we saw the situation improving, we have already reinvested $1.5 billion.

The decision was made a few weeks ago, and that's the money Mr. Charest talked about, but what is important is to make sure, and it's why I disagree with Mr. Charest, is make sure that the five conditions of medicare are respected because otherwise there will be a medicare for the rich and a medicare for the rest of the people.

MR. MANNING: Reform's plan here is to balance the federal budget, run surpluses, and reinvest a portion of the surpluses, $4 billion a year, back into health care.

But the bigger problem here, and I'm the only leader that was here with you, Mr. Chrétien, in the last leaders' debate, I heard you promise to maintain health transfers at the current level, and you stopped, and you said, "I guarantee it." The fact is you have cut the health and social transfers by $7 billion or by 40,000. You've put money into Bombardier that should have gone into hospitals. You put money into a canoe museum in your riding that could have gone into hospitals, and the voters are going to hold you accountable. How can they believe you on guaranteeing health care when that is your record on a promise made in the last leaders' debate?

MR. MOSCOVITZ: Mr. Charest, Canadians have seen hospitals close across the country. They've seen service reduced. You say it's the Liberals' fault, but it seem that medicare is certainly getting smaller rather than larger.

If you were Prime Minister, would those hospitals reopen across the country?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: The provincial governments have to decide how they administer their services, but there is one thing I know about this debate: No one can stand here tonight and say, "I'm going to guarantee health care through the federal system," when they then turn around and cut cash transfers 40 per cent without any plan and unilaterally. You can't do that. You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth.

Yes, we can guarantee our health care system because it's a shared value among Canadians. Canadians want this health care system to work, and that's what I think will bring the governments to the table and make this happen by stopping the cuts, putting more money in, also by negotiating on the five principles of the Canada Health Act plus standards that we then have to deliver in the health care system. Then and only then would I transfer the tax points over, which happen to grow in value, which means that, at the end, there is $2 billion more to spend for health care.

What I will not do tonight, though, is what Mr. Chrétien did when, in last debate, he said we have to maintain the same level of transfer for all programs for the next five years -- not only medicare, but university and other social programs, and I guarantee that we'll do that. Well, it's a good thing Mr. Chrétien didn't say it was a money-back guarantee; otherwise, he'd be broke today, because what he did was exactly the contrary.

He had a choice in this regard. When he says that he cut everybody, what he didn't mention is that this same government also said that they would cut spending in Ottawa, programs spending, by 19 per cent. That's the commitment they made in 1995, yet they missed that objective, that target, by 50 per cent.

So let me get this clear: They're taking the money off your paycheque every week to create a surplus in the employment insurance fund. They haven't missed cutting health care and cash transfers to the provinces, but they missed cutting program spending in Ottawa. That's the choice that they have made, and I'm proposing a very different choice to Canadians, one based on our shared values and common will to deliver these services.

MR. MANNING: The promise made last debate has been broken. Why should people believe you this time?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I'd like to talk to Mr. Charest about what he just said because he always forgets to talk about the tax points that the provinces received. This is part of the transfer. He refuses to talk about the transfer of equalization payment that are transferred to the provinces.

MR. MANNING: What about the commitment? You made this commitment to maintain last year, and you broke it. Why should Canadians believe the commitment that you make now?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I have to tell you this, that when we started, we had $42 billion, not of deficit, not the 32 that was written in the last --

MR. MANNING: You knew that when you made the commitment. You knew that.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We had to cut.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: You had choices. Why did you miss your target in Ottawa?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We cut 17 per cent of the programs of the government and only 9 per cent of transfer payments to the provinces.

MR. MANNING: But you knew that, Mr. Chrétien.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Now that we're doing well, we have reinvested $1.5 billion right away in medicare.

MR. MANNING: You knew what the deficit was, Mr. Chrétien, when you made that commitment. We all knew the deficit was in the vicinity of $40 to $50 billion. You knew the commitment, yet you said you would maintain health care at current levels. Why should people believe you when you say you'll preserve it now?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You were with me in that debate, and you remember the Prime Minister at that time -- you, I, and Mr. Bouchard, we asked the Conservative Party at that time what was to be the deficit. We were all sceptical about the $31 billion. It turned out to be $42 billion. She could not reply. We had to make the assumption on the figures we had in front of us.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: You had the margin of manoeuvre of at least $8 billion, so it's possible to reinject that money to the provinces, the money you cut for transfer payments.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: The first time that we saw the light at the end of the tunnel was when it was evident that we were one year and a half ahead of our program and --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: And the election campaign was called.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: No.

MS McDONOUGH: You didn't know it on April 1 when you reduced the budget. You didn't know you were going to be $8 billion ahead on deficit reduction. No wonder we're in trouble with our finances.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: There is a cabinet decision about that, and I have written to all the premiers. The cabinet decision was made, and, after we received the figures that we were doing better than expected, and the first dividend that we wanted to give, because the economy was doing better than predicted, went exactly to medicare.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Maybe this Prime Minister wants to share with us the cabinet documents on which that decision was made.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Chrétien, you're not telling the truth when you say you reinvested that money in health care. You haven't done one single thing to reinvest any of the money in health care that you've taken out, and we're talking about billions and billions of dollars, not once, but year after year after year.

On the first day of this election, when you announced that you were putting money back into health care, that was not the truth. You were only locking in the cuts that you had already introduced in year one and year two. You're proceeding with 11 more months of cuts to a health care system that's already bleeding. You're only saying that next year, maybe, if we believe your election promises, you wouldn't proceed with the third year of cuts.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You're blaming all the cuts on the last administration. I'd like to tell you something, Ms McDonough. Mr. Romanow closed down 58 hospitals when I was in the opposition.

MS McDONOUGH: And tell the truth. Replaced every cent. The Romanow government replaced every cent that you took out of health care in the form of federal health transfers. Every cent and then some money. Is that not the truth?

MR. MANNING: Shouldn't we be searching for a solution here?

MS McDONOUGH: The Saskatchewan government has replaced every cent your government took out of the Saskatchewan health care system.

MR. MANNING: The solution is to balance the budget fast to get to surpluses, and then you've got money to reinvest in injured social programs. That is what seven of the provinces have done, and that's what you should be doing.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: It's exactly what we say when you're promising only tax cuts. We said that half of the profit we'll have when the books will be balanced will go for social and economic programs, and the other half to tax cuts. That is a more balanced approach. We want to cut taxes to the big corporations, we want to cut it in --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Let's be clear on the whole issues of tax cuts. From the beginning of this campaign, as it has evolved, the issue of whether we can or not reduce taxes is one that's resolved. Mr. Chrétien has done that himself by putting out a Red Book that proposes to spend more money. So the issue is resolved. There is money there. The issue is, is he going to spend it, or is it going to return to your pockets? That's one issue.

Mr. Chrétien, interestingly enough on this whole issue of health care, discovered this issue once the election campaign was launched. He's just said that he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the light that he saw at the end of the tunnels was the white of the eyes of the Canadian voter, and it's the only reason why he changed his mind, because it certainly wasn't going to happen with the opposition parties he had in the House of Commons who were unable to fight these health care cuts, even though they were so drastic. Yes, we can do -- if I can finish. The reason why I want --

MS McDONOUGH: They were so much in favour of the cuts that they couldn't stand up to Canadians and look them in the eye.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: -- offer Canadians a health care guarantee is for this reason: so that never again a Prime Minister can do what Mr. Chrétien has done, say I'll guarantee it and then cut. By having the covenant and deal with the provinces, never again can a Prime Minister cut our health care the way Jean Chrétien has.

MR. MANNING: You have the same credibility problem as the Prime Minister. You were in government for nine years. You did not deliver tax relief. You raised federal taxes 71 times. You brought us the 3 per cent surtax, the 5 per cent surtax, the GST. Why would the public believe you could deliver tax relief now when you never did it during those nine years? You have the same problem as him: credibility.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Mr. Manning, there was an election in 1993 that spoke very clearly on that, but I'd like to redo history with you and Mr. Chrétien tonight. The fact of the matter, there is not a sick person in the country tonight who will be helped by your recitation of history. There's not an unemployed person tonight in this country that will be helped by you trying to talk about the last 12 years.

MR. MANNING: There have been 71 tax increases. It determines who they can believe and credibility.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I'm interested in talking about the next 12 years. I'm interested about talking about the future, and I've spent three and a half years, to tell you the truth, listening very carefully to Canadians so that I could be prepared for this night and for this election campaign to talk about the future.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Charest, you have no moral authority to discuss social security unless you give up your $4.3 million pension plan. Will you do that? Will you commit to that tonight? Yes or no? You've got to get credibility on this issue.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Mr. Manning, you're in a very difficult position talk about credibility on this issue after you showed up in Ottawa saying, "We're going to be different", cynically gave away the keys to the car, and then we find out that you have a personal, non-receiptable tax expense account that you and your family have. You're in a bad position, Mr. Manning, to give lessons to others.

MS McDONOUGH: No wonder Parliament doesn't work for Canadians anymore. No wonder we don't get running because this is how the time is spent on the floor of the House of Commons.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You can see what I have to cope with in the House of Commons all the time. The problem with discussing it this time is, when we became the government, we had a mess that was left by the Tories, $42 billion.

MR. MANNING: And now it's worse.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Of course, we cannot, when you're a government, do everything you want to do, especially when the deficit is $11 billion more. I'm sorry, we could not do everything we want, but look at what we've done. We have managed to restore the credibility of Canada --

MS McDONOUGH: If you can't do everything, start with the number one priority. You said it was going to be jobs. You can't do everything? Start with the priority.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: But you won't have any social programs in Canada if you have a bankrupt nation if half the money eventually was to go to pay the interest of the debt, so we have first to cure the big problem of the nation, and we've done it.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: You have a margin to manoeuvre, to inject the necessary money into transfer payments. $4.5 billion you cut last year and this year. And also to stop using unemployment insurance funds just to reduce your deficit. Would you agree with that? You got the margin of manoeuvre to do something.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: When you have an insurance scheme that was in deficit when we started, any good management makes sure that he has a reserve for the future because it's the way issues work, and at the same time --

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: You have a reserve --

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Let me finish. At the same time, we have reduced the premium from $3.30 to $2.90, and it will be $2.80 in January. It's difficult to manage the country, but look at the progress that the country has made in the last three years and seven months. The world says we're doing better. I'm optimistic about the future.

THE MODERATOR: I'm going call the end of this round, and we will go to questions from the audience. I might ask the leaders, if they could, to keep their responses relatively short so that we can get to as many questions as possible.

MS FREISEN: This is Margaret Bokaw (ph) from Alexandria, Ontario, and she has a question for Mr. Chrétien.

Q. Good evening. I have a degree in economics, and I've already heard way too many numbers quoted here. I wonder if you have a plan for how to spend the money better. Whatever amount you're going to spend, can you spend it any better than it's being spent now for health care?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For us, we say that all the provincial governments, madam, and the federal government, we were faced with a difficult situation. As I explained to Ms McDonough, the problem in health care was there. In Saskatchewan, they had to close, and I don't blame them, 58 hospitals before I became the Prime Minister. This health care system needed reform, and every provincial government has worked very hard to do just that.

For us, we say that we will keep increasing the transfer payments to the provinces. We have to cut there like anybody else. You cannot reduce the deficit only on a few parts of the government. You have to be cutting around the government the same way.

Canada was spending 10.5 per cent of GDP on health care, and it was one of the highest in the world, and everybody agreed that it could be managed better. And it's the health forum who said that there is, at this moment, if we were to go back to $12.5 billion, the money we put back is going there, they said that there is enough money in the health care system at this moment to operate, but we have to change the system. Because people spend less long in hospitals, and we have to talk about medication for them when they are out of hospitals, so these are the changes we need.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm with Tonya Youngbird (ph). She lives in Ottawa, and she has a question for Mr. Charest.

Q. Mr. Charest, you are asking for dramatic cuts in taxes and a more balanced budget, but at the same time you are calling for an improved health care system that's going to be guaranteed, but you have not yet indicated where the money is going to come from for an improved health care while cutting all the government spending.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Thank you. That is a very important question. It all boils down to choices. It's worth stopping a second to look at what we're dealing with now in the country. Governments at all levels and, by the way, of all political parties, persuasion, are all agreed on the fact that we have to balance our books and start paying down our debt. Everyone agrees on that.

The real debate for us for the future of our country is the choices we're going to make as we go along the way, and that will really speak to our values.

The choices that I am proposing are these ones: I think we have to balance our books. I want to do it by the year 2000. Yes, we are proposing reductions in spending. We have detailed this in the plan that we have here, Let the Future Begin. We're the only party that has included the detail, by the way.

And by the way, the cuts we're proposing are tough. You're from the Ottawa area. I don't want to pretend that they're not; they are difficult. There's difficult choices, but I believe they're the right choices. And by reducing spending $12 billion, also legislating a law to balance the books, a law that will also demand that the Prime Minister and ministers be accountable for that, if they don't meet their targets, their pay will be cut. We will then be able to make a better choice, put more money into health care and other programs. That's the choice we would make.

MS FREISEN: This is Paul Walsh (ph) from London, Ontario. He has a question for Mr. Manning.

Q. Mr. Manning, I would like to know, with your ideas on how to keep our health care and all our other social programs going, but the one thing I have yet to hear tonight is on the fact of this massive debt that this country is going to struggle with and is going to keep struggling on with for years.

MR. MANNING: We have this fiscal plan that addresses both dimensions of your question. In a way, it's our answer to a lot of the questions that have been asked here tonight.

First, balance the budget as fast as you can, and we spell out how we do it. We do it by reducing the size of the government, and we do it by '98-99. Then you run surpluses.

Then you invest the surpluses three ways: One, you put something back into the social programs that have been hurt. We propose health and education $4 billion a year. We use a large portion of the surplus for tax relief, and we put the rest into debt reduction, an initial $5 to $10 billion in debt reduction, and then set up the system in the future so that a fixed proportion of future surpluses go to debt retirement. That way, you address the three things you want to do once you have the budget balanced.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm with Pat Spensley (ph). She's from Montreal and has a question for Ms McDonough.

Q. The alternative federal budget is formed each year by a coalition of ordinary people as well as prominent economists. It gives alternatives for not having to cut painfully social services and health care. How would your government implement some of these policies?

MS McDONOUGH: Well, thank you very much, and you're absolutely right that the alternative federal budget, because there hasn't been the kinds of presence in the House of Commons to force these guys to talk about alternatives, has kept before the Canadian people a clear sense that there is a better way, there is a different way. And the better way is to make jobs the number one priority, and the better way is to recognize that we can't cut so fast and so deep our health and education and other vital services because it not only reduces services and forces people to pay for them when they're not able to pay for them in many cases, but also is a jobs killer.

I think that the alternative budget is a clear articulation of a different way of going about it, one that acknowledges that we shouldn't just govern for the wealthy talking about tax cuts across the board, which basically are paid for by robbing the pockets of ordinary working people.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We now go on to our third theme, which has been obviously anticipated, which is government choices on the economy.

Peter Kent, you have a question for Alexa McDonough.

MR. KENT: Well, deficit fighting was a preoccupation of the last election. Deficit elimination is now on the horizon, but it's clear that you all have different visions of where that horizon is or should be. Nonetheless, there are more choices.

Ms McDonough, you have favoured the most drastic adjustment of Canada's economic levers, major new taxes and significant new spending. Why the sharp change in direction?

MS McDONOUGH: Of course, it's not a change in the direction in the sense that we have always argued for a fair tax system. What that means is that everybody should pay their fair share.

We know in this country that hard-working people are paying their fair share, but it's not the idea of fairness of most Canadians that there are immensely wealthy people in this country who pay very little in taxes. There are profitable corporations in this country who pay not one red cent of corporate income tax.

This is ridiculous at a time when there aren't moneys available for something as basic as health, education and other vital services. Just since the Liberals came to office, over $50 billion in corporate profits have gone totally untaxed. There were 67,000 profitable companies in this country that weren't paying any corporate income taxes when the Liberals came to office, and their contribution to tax fairness three years later was to increase that to 82,000 profitable corporations.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For us, a strong economy is the essence of a strong society, and I agree that everybody has to pay a fair share, but we have to have priorities, as I said earlier.

We want to balance the books, and I think we can do it in a very civilized way. But, of course, you talk about taxes. When we came to the government, we had worked very hard to make sure that everybody pays more. There's only two departments that the budgets were not cut. One was Indian Affairs and other one was National Revenue.

And today, to reply to you, when we started as a government, the corporations were paying $9.4 billion in taxes, and now they pay $16 billion because we have plugged many of the holes that existed. So it's the way to operate to make sure that everybody pay his fair share in the tax system.

But you need a government that is committed to that, and it's exactly what we have done. It's good administration. But we have to keep in mind that it's not only tax cuts that is important in society; it's to look at the reality that there is social and economic problems that we face by the government.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: This is very much an issue about choices, about whether or not, as a country, we're going to be able to focus on the right priorities. We do have choices. To pretend that we didn't over the last few years is completely wrong.

Look at the choices that the government has made. It has chosen to over-tax Canadians in the employment insurance system which was never designed to reduce the deficit. It wasn't designed for that reason. There will be a $17 billion surplus in that system after three years.

I think we have to make a different choice. We have to recognize that government has to be smaller, more focused. I want a national government that's going to do less things but get them right. I'd like to see us reduce the size of government, make a commitment to balance our books, legislate that, and commit the cabinet to make that happen by cutting their pay if they don't.

I want us to go further also by reinvesting in health care, in education, and ensuring pensions for the future. Those are areas where I think the country wants us to focus, where Canadians want to see us deliver very strong policies that will guarantee them some peace of mind for the future.

MR. MANNING: I have outlined our fiscal plan and how we would allocate resources. There are two other quality of life dimension that I think are worth mentioning.

One is that we would like to strengthen families. We see families as being the baseline social unit. They're under more strain because of reductions we've made in social spending, so we propose these measures to put more dollars in the pockets of families, $2,000 for the average family of four by the year 2000.

The other quality of life priority for us is a big one, the whole area of crime, to change the balance there, to put the rights of victims of crime, law-abiding citizens, ahead of those of criminals through tightening up the Young Offenders Act, the parole system, a victims' bill of rights, focusing on criminal use of firearms rather than simply a gun registration. Quality of life elements.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: I think we should respect the Auditor General's recommendation. He made important recommendations that means $3 billion, and also revise the taxation to have a fairer tax system.

When I was talking about capital gains only taxed 75 per cent and employment income is taxed 100 per cent, we can't accept that. We can't accept that.

Also, we have to be sure we don't keep those fiscal paradise which companies use to have their head offices -- even the Minister of Finance's, companies, some of them are in Bermuda or Liberia (ph), while we're asking people not to work under the table.

I do agree that we have to ask people not to do underground economy, but that example should come first of all from people like the Minister of Finance.

MR. KENT: Ms McDonough, there's broad agreement among independent economists that the NDP numbers simply don't add up, and you've had to make billions of dollars of corrections in your campaign estimates.

MS McDONOUGH: Let me say that that's just not the case. In fact, we did make a mistake. We put a chart in there. Two figures that related to that chart didn't belong in there. It was a mistake. Within 24 hours, we discovered it. We corrected it. We put out the correct information. It didn't change our bottom lines. It didn't change our projections. It didn't change the impact on our programs.

But let me say what Canadians are more concerned about. They're more concerned about the mistakes that this Prime Minister has made that he still hasn't apologized for and he still hasn't corrected.

He made a commitment in the 1993 election to get rid of the GST. It still hasn't happened. He made a commitment in the 1993 election not to cut social transfers. He cut $7 billion out, and he's still cutting. He made a commitment to make jobs the number one priority. Canadians are still waiting.

I think these are the kinds of mistakes that the people of Canada want addressed.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Can I start by saying one thing about this whole role of government, which is the issue we're talking about. One thing I think is important to understand, in Canada there's an important role for a national government. There is one. I'm not one who thinks that the Government of Canada doesn't have a constructive role, quite to the contrary.

Our challenge, though, is to recognize that, for the last 30 years, governments have been trying to do too much, and out of good faith, maybe. We try to put forward a program, solve a problem, we've gone too far. We've moved away from our basic culture. That's why we have to now turn in the other direction, return to what has worked well for Canadians, an economy with strong economic growth that produces jobs. Growth means allowing Canadians to keep the money they earn. It means doing away with $5 billion of senseless tax on jobs that, frankly, just shocks me that we allow this to happen. Returning and reducing personal income taxes is going to allow Canadians to at least start to reverse the trend of diminishing incomes.

A good question to ask ourselves tonight is, why is it that, in Canada, we have double the unemployment rate that our neighbour to the south, the United States, has? Why is it that, in Canada, in the last three years, real disposable income has gone down 1 per cent while, at the same period of time, disposable income in the United States has gone up 11 per cent?

Now, there's a reason for that.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Yes, it's because of the deficit that you left us.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I mean, we must be doing something wrong, and someone is doing something right. When Mr. Chrétien says it's because of the deficit, I beg to differ with him. But in this campaign, he's put out a book in which he's ready to spend more money. He keeps saying that they have to balance the books, yet he's ready to spend $10 million on art for the new millennium or money for a commissioner for aquaculture. Why is he ready to spend that money, yet he continues to say there's a deficit in the debt?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: The programs exist in our society. I think that we will have the millennium. A country like Canada can celebrate the millennium. I guess it's a very important date.

But when you talk, Mr. Charest, about all the time that you will reduce the unemployment insurance premium, what is your credibility? It was 195 a few years before your term was finished, and you move it to 330. We have reduced it from 330 to 290, and we're going down until we have a reserve. Because when you have an insurance scheme, you need a reserve. We have to pay your deficit from there.

For Ms McDonough, when I look at her program, she's talking, as Peter said earlier, that does not add up very much. You're always proposing spending and spending and spending, and I could quote a few things from Tony Blair who has changed from the old labour NDP type --

MS McDONOUGH: Not as much as the Liberal Party has changed. Not as much as the federal Liberal Party has changed, abandoning traditional values.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Some say spend every available penny on more government spending, on every conceivable public service, keep things exactly as they were 10 and 20 years ago no matter what the cost. In my view, there is nothing progressive about blindly defending the past. Roy Romanow said that. He is a premier, and he knows what it is to be responsible and of putting order into the finances of the province.

MS McDONOUGH: May I address your question, Mr. Chrétien?

MR. MANNING: Can I ask a question of Madam Chairman before we start?

MS McDONOUGH: Why don't you tell Canadians the truth?

MR. MANNING: Are we on role of government? It's very hard to tell from what is being said what subject anybody is on.

THE MODERATOR: The actual issue that was raised was government choices on the economy. However you wish to interpret it, that is all up to you.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, I would just say that I believe that a government can be a force for good in society, and the government cannot do everything. It is the balance --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: If I could take a second to respond to Mr. Chrétien in regards to the ideas we're talking about. He asked where we take them. I've just spent three and a half years listening, learning -- maybe learning the hard way -- about a lot of these issues, but I spent those three and a half years with Canadians, and I think I have a pretty good sense of what they know.

One thing I want to mention to give you an example, Mr. Chrétien, you say it's worth spending $10 million on art for the millennium. I believe in art. I'm a big believer in arts for this country, but I also happen to believe that, given our financial situation, that if Canadians believe in the millennium, they believe in their country, they'll be ready to give the art away. You don't have to take their money to spend $10 million on art. That's a difference between your choice and my choice.

MR. MANNING: If we're talking about choices of government, isn't the bigger overriding issue how to hold governments accountable for the choices that they make? That touches everything that we're talking about here.

This is a problem. The public is so sceptical that they can't hold us accountable. I'd ask each of you, would you be willing to put in the hands of the public the right to fire you and your MPs if they broke their promises after this election? Would you support this concept of recall in the hands of the voters in order to give them a tool to hold us accountable for the choices that we make?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, I don't agree with that, because we are elected, and the accountability is at this moment. The people in every riding will chose their Members of Parliament.

MR. MANNING: But between elections.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Who will be the arbitrator? You said, for example, that there were to be free votes in the House of Commons, and we had more free votes than your party, so you would have been recalled right away. The problem for us is the people have a choice today. They are looking at five parties, and they are looking at Members of Parliament. It is the way that democracy works.

MR. MANNING: So you would not support giving the voters recall in between elections to hold you accountable for broken promises?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: No. I had a few by-elections, and you blame for me for by-election, that it was costing money. So every time that there would be a recall, there would be another by-election. The guy would come in the house, make a mistake, he will be recalled again.

MR. MANNING: Would you support recall as accountability? Would you, Mr. Charest, support recall?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I thank Mr. Manning for the question. Since you have offered me the opportunity to speak on this issue, I also happen to think that one of the things as I look towards the new century in terms of the role of the Prime Minister that should change is that the Prime Minister should also offer Canadians some leadership in regards to some key issues that go maybe beyond jurisdictions.

MR. MANNING: Accountability through recall?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: One of the things I feel very strongly about is the area of education and training. If there's one thing where I think the country has to do a lot better is making sure kids finish school. One of the things I want to do is make sure there's a youth strategy where every young person is either in school, in training, at work, or doing community service.

I'm ready, as a Prime Minister, to use the employment insurance system to make that happen, to take that money, to spend it on internship, mentorship, co-op education, to help them make that transition from either unemployment and to a job.

And by the way, in the end, I don't think it would be right to pay young people to stay at home.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Charest, your proposal is taking $150 million out of training.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: You're talking about national standards for education. Is that what you're proposing?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I'm proposing to do what governments in the federation should do, each complement the other's efforts, set common goals. The Prime Minister of the country should be a leader able to set common goals for the country and say, "Here's the new horizon".

I happen to think the Prime Minister should be somebody who points the way, not someone who spends all his time pointing the finger, but able to say to Canadians, "Here is where we should be going. Here are the few key priorities for the country."

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Do you not think the provinces are able to manage the education systems by themselves?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Mr. Charest, you talk about internship. We have this program at this moment. It's in existence. We have it. We are helping young people to work with corporations, to work on international trade, to work with government. We have this program already.

You talk in your program that you will connect by year 2000 all the schools and all the libraries in Canada, but I'm sorry to tell you it will be done next year. We're already two years ahead of your program.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about a national objective where every young person would either be in school, in training, at work, or doing community service. That's what I'm talking about. To do that, I'm ready to call a national conference in the first six months of my mandate with the private sector, non-governmental organizations, governments at all levels, for the purpose of setting this common objective, rallying the country around it, and then using the levers we control each at our level, Mr. Duceppe. I'm not talking about intervening in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

What I do think does not make sense is having an income support program like employment insurance that does not support our objectives in education and training. I want to change that for the country. I want to change it for the next century. I want to do it rapidly so that we can make sure that every young Canadian has the tools they need to take advantage of those opportunities.

MS McDONOUGH: You want to talk about giving our young people the best start in life, but you have no trouble at all spending unemployment insurance funds that are literally taking the food out of the mouths of children as a result of the choices that this government is making and you are proposing to make. We are talking about a situation where more than half of the unemployed in this country today aren't eligible for one single cent of unemployment insurance, not one cent of income support.

You want us to believe that your top priority is giving our young people the best start in life? Does nobody that served in this Parliament over the last three and a half years in your parties have a problem with the fact that you have created 600,000 more children living in poverty in Canada in a country where there's more wealth than there has ever been?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: And it's exactly for that, Madam McDonough, that, in the last budget, we have given tax credit for poor families with children, $850 million.

MS McDONOUGH: As a result of the budget that you brought in, you made 380,000 more poor kids even worse off than if you hadn't introduced that budget.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: At the last federal-provincial meeting with the premiers, we collectively agreed that child poverty was a problem, and it was proposed by provincial governments and federal government and everybody agreed that it was a priority.

It's why, for me, social problems exist in our society. I don't think it is a big preoccupation with the two right-wing parties.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Chrétien, how can you say that this was an attack on child poverty when 380,000 more Canadian children living in poverty are going to be worse off this year than if you hadn't introduced the budget?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: With respect, Mr. Chrétien, Canadians are poorer today than when you were elected in 1993. There are more poor people today than when were you elected in 1993. The jobless rate for young Canadians is higher. We have had more. The participation rate of Canadians in the labour market is lower. So please, I don't think you're in a position to turn now to other people and say that our positions are not legitimate or irresponsible when, in fact, all I'm proposing to do is allow Canadians to keep their money.

THE MODERATOR: I'm going to call an end to this section of debate, and we're now going to turn to some of the questions from the audience.

MS FREISEN: This is Betty Kay Murray (ph) from Peterborough, Ontario. She has a question for Mr. Manning.

Q. Mr. Manning, you said that one of the things that you want to spend money on is quality of life and specifically making families stronger, strengthening families. I would like to know how you propose to do this with economics.

MR. MANNING: There's two dimensions to this strengthening the family. The first is not economic at all but it's government starting to recognize the value of parenting and governments recognizing that the family is the social unit that is picking up the slack when the health care system gets into trouble, when the pension system is not providing adequate income for elderly people, when the children are not adequately being provided for.

It's to recognize the formal statement by government of the value of parenting. Now, just that recognition by itself is not sufficient. We say one of the ways to put some economic muscle behind it is to leave more dollars in the pockets of families to care for their own members and to spend. We have this tax relief package that does that. It particularly extends the child care tax deduction and converts it into a credit and makes it available to all parents regardless of how they choose to care for their children.

In other words, it creates choices for families. They can make the decisions to work or not to work, how to care for their children, and the tax system will treat them exactly the same. So family-friendly tax policies, but social policies that put the family as the first unit and recognize the value of parenting for the value that it is.

MR. BOURBEAU: I have a question from Carl Cundiff (ph). He lives in Sydney, British Columbia, and he has a question for Mr. Chrétien.

Q. Good evening, Mr. Chrétien. I would like to ask your help in my understanding of why an election is being held with a year and a half to still run in the mandate and the cost efficiency to the voters of Canada. Thank you.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, sir, we were ahead of our program, and already the campaign had started. All the parties were advertising. Many of the leaders were campaigning across the land, and it was for me to decide to have an election in June or in October. A normal mandate is four years, and I did not want to have a type of campaign, seven months like in the United States.

In terms of managing the affairs of the nation, to have an election in June, whoever forms the government will have the summer to prepare the program so that you can start anew in September and have a normal year of operation.

These were the reasons, because the debate had started. Everybody expected an election. All the people said the election is either in the spring, we do it early summer, or in the fall. It was my decision that I felt that the time has come to have this present debate so that we can tackle the very difficult problem right in September so that there will not be a loss of time.

That is the tradition of Canada, that when the government is not in difficulty, the tradition is you call the election in the fourth year, and we are in the fourth year at this moment.

MS FREISEN: This is Alana Brownlee (ph) from Winnipeg, and she also has a question for Mr. Chrétien.

Q. You've indicated that you feel in this last budget that the child tax credit has reduced child poverty. The effect of the reduction in the transfer payments to the provinces has drastically cut the social programs, particularly in Manitoba. It's resulted in cuts to welfare payments, the most drastic cuts being for children under the age of five. How do you propose to redress this in your upcoming budgets to effectively reduce child poverty?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For us, madam, it's a very important question you're asking, and for us, we had first to make sure that the finances of the nation were in good standing.

Every year, more money was going to pay for the interest rates and paying very often abroad to bankers and financiers, so we had to put order. Unfortunately, it was not pleasant for anybody, and provincial governments had to do that too. We had to cut to make sure that we're having a balanced budget. We're not there yet. We will be there soon.

But when we saw that we had an opening because we're doing better than predicted, we have restored $1.5 billion that was supposed to be taken away from the provinces next year and the year after. With that, that will stop the cuts, and we have instituted this $850 million in tax credits for poor families so that this problem can be attended for.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm with Dianne Powers (ph). She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and she has a question for Mr. Charest.

Q. Good evening, Mr. Charest. Mr. Charest, you talked about choices, choices that Canadians have to make as we enter the millennium. There's one choice that I haven't heard discussed at all, and I want to know where it falls out in terms of your economic strategies, and that's the choice to protect our environment to ensure that we can do any of these other measures at all.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Well, that's a very important issue for this country. Just to put it in some perspective, Canada, of all the industrialized countries in the world, is the country that lives the most off its environment, as you know, Dianne: softwood lumber, pulp and paper, energy, whether hydrocarbons or hydroelectricity, agriculture, fisheries, the list goes on and on.

Furthermore, we're a country that depends a lot on trade to earn our way, so the way we manage our environment is going to be very much an economic issue for us.

One of the things that I want to change in this rationalization of government in Ottawa is to create a department of sustainable development with a longer term view. What we'll do to make that happen is merge the departments of fishery, agriculture, natural resources and environment together. The view brought to these departments is how we manage our resources for the longer term.

I'm also a very, very big believer in defending our position, especially in regards to the United States. I have been very worried about this government's lack of spine in regards to some of these matters, acid rain, for example, but also the cleaning up of the DEW sites.

You may remember that recently they concluded a deal with the Americans that said that they would pay $100 million on the condition that they buy American technology when in fact the estimated cost of cleaning up the DEW sites is half a billion dollars. That is a failure, I think, in regards to how we manage our environment.

MS FREISEN: This is Bruce Minaker (ph) from Scarborough, Ontario, and he has a question for Ms McDonough.

Q. Hello. Alexa, you've been hammering the Liberals these last few days in the media on their health cuts; yet you've proposed a $15 billion increase, I believe, according to the media. How would you expect to begin to believe that you could bring the deficit down?

MS McDONOUGH: Well, let me make very clear -- and Mr. Chrétien chose not to address this question -- that the NDP platform and our spending proposals in fact are at a lower level of deficit. In other words, our deficit reduction level is below that introduced by the Liberals in their April 1, '97 budget. So if they are being critical of our deficit reduction target and our level of spending, they must be braced for a great deal of criticism for theirs which was less fiscally sound than the proposal that we put forward.

But let me say very clearly that we have made it the priority that jobs, that growing the economy, that generating tax funds where people now would be happy to pay taxes if they had jobs. People are much happier if they have jobs and can pay their fair share of taxes. We've also talked about closing the loopholes because we have immense leakage from our tax system.

Even the International Monetary Fund has said that tax breaks to big corporations and to the wealthy in Canada are overly generous and can't be afforded. The Auditor General has said that we have to address the fact that so many of the tax revenues that are needed in this country are going in breaks for the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Our agreed-upon time limit for this question period has now run out.

We now get to our fourth theme, which is national unity. Craig Oliver has a question, I believe, for Jean Chrétien.

MR. OLIVER: And for everyone else. Not to raise the ghosts of the dozens of failed constitutional conferences that took place in this very room, Canada will have to reach some kind of an accommodation with Quebec in the term of the next government, even though there is no appetite out there. I'd like to know from all of you what kind of an offer you think should be made to Quebec and what process should be followed.

Particularly for the Prime Minister, I'd like to say to you that you reassured us before the last referendum that if we all shut up, everything would be just fine, and then you almost lost the country. What assurances do Canadians have that you're the man to lead us into one again?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You know, Craig, I have spent my life working to bring Canadians together. It is in fact the most important duty of a Prime Minister.

We've gone through difficult times, but we've made some progress. I do not believe in big schemes. I believe in solving problems one by one, one at a time. And we have done it, not only with Quebec. We have for example, settled the problem of manpower training with Alberta, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Manitoba and Quebec. We have solved the problem of fisheries with B.C. that existed since a long time. We have established clearly that where there was duplication in forestry, in mining, in social housing that was clear. We took one problem at a time. We had a problem with Ontario and B.C. on immigration that existed since a long time. We cured that.

But for me, what is important is to make sure that the country functions well, and it's exactly what I intend to do with improving the situation. We will convince the Quebeckers that the best for them is to stay in Canada.

MR. MANNING: For 30 years, the traditional parties have been managing this issue, and, in our view, they've bungled it. Now all three of the traditional parties take one approach to this. They say the answer to the unity problem is special status and to recognize Quebec constitutionally as a distinct society.

This ignores the rejection of that concept in Meech, its rejection by the public in Charlottetown and, in our view, that is a sure formula for disaster.

Reform is looking for a fresh start alternative, and this is what we think it is: Adopt the principle of equality of all citizens and provinces regardless of race, culture, language or personal characteristics. Offer each of the provinces a bundle of powers to develop the distinctive features of its economy and its society, and have a strong federal government focused in ten big areas of national and international responsibility. In other words, reform the federation as an alternative.

The last element in our program would be to make it crystal clear to Quebeckers the consequences of either democratically or unilaterally choosing to secede.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: I think the choices are very clear for Quebeckers: It is sovereignty or Canada as is. We've been trying for so many years to find an agreement between Quebec and Canada. It was always impossible, always impossible.

The only solution is the one we're proposing, having two sovereign countries with a new partnership, a partnership recognizing the equality of both nations, Quebec and Canada. We don't see any other way of solving that problem.

Charlottetown was the very last try we made, and we know, Mr. Chrétien, that the proposal of this distinct society you're making, well, Canadians don't want that. You know that as well as me. Even if it means nothing, Mr. Chrétien, it means nothing for Quebeckers, but it means too much for Canadians. You know that better than me, and Mr. Charest knows that better than me also.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Well, here is an issue that I also feel very strongly about, to the point where I've always made it very clear to my own party that, on this issue, partisan politics will always come in second, that Canada will always come in first.

In fact, the real issue for the future is whether or not we as a country are going to work with a separatist agenda or a Canadian agenda. That's the real battle that's out there today, and I want a Canadian agenda.

By the way, let me share the good news with you, because I've spent the last three and a half years travelling. Canadians want this country to work, including a majority of francophones in Quebec, feel attached to their Canadian citizenship, and they want this country to work. But what Canada has always required, not just in the last 30 years, but for the last 130 years, is national leaders and national parties able to bring us together to create a common sense of purpose.

I want to do that by changing the way federalism operates and set the table for the more difficult debates that we'll face like distinct society, like the rebalancing of powers that will soon come, but let's start first by recreating a common sense of purpose for our country and do away with this politics of divisiveness that we've had for the last three and a half years.

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Oliver, your question was, what should the offer to Quebeckers be, and I think the offer to Quebeckers has to be the offer to other Canadians as well, which is the promise made by the Liberals in the 1993 election, that is, to make jobs the number one priority, to strengthen our social programs.

These are the things that are going to make Canada strong. These are the things that are going to make Canadians confident. These are the things that are going to make Canada something that everybody wants to be part of.

I believe, having spent a good deal of time in Quebec in the last couple of years, that that is exactly what most Quebeckers want. They want to know that they can have jobs, that their kids can have an education, that their relatives can get health care when they're sick.

Yes, there are difference about Quebec that need to be respected and recognized, but constitutional reconciliation is not going to be achievable until we improve the political and economic climate, and then I think people will want to come together in a spirit of generosity to make sure that we can pull together and all move Canada forward as a confident united country.

MR. OLIVER: Prime Minister, aren't you about ready to give up on this whole concept of distinct society since it's become a fighting word, particularly in Alberta and B.C. where they can veto it? I mean, are you really determined to try to go ahead and entrench this in the Constitution, or how do you intend to sell it?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, the word distinct society, the concept is a question of dignity for the people of Quebec. I have very much difficulties to understand people using it to try to divide the people.

What is distinct society? Distinct society is a recognition that 85 per cent of the people of Quebec speak French. When they speak French, they have a French culture, and we say distinct society comes from the fact that John A. Macdonald in 1867 gave the civil law to Quebeckers. These are the three elements of what is distinct society.

It is already a recognition of what exists and it's a question of asking the Canadians to understand the diversity of Canada, the fact that we have two languages. In Canada, it's not a problem; it's an asset. I'm just asking the people to be generous towards Quebec, and they will be very happy to stay in Canada.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Chrétien, we had this discussion in the house. No one objects if the only object of distinct society is to affirm the distinctiveness of Quebec, but what I asked you in the house was, does this confer on the Government of Quebec powers not conferred on other provinces, because that's the objection of other provinces. You said no, it doesn't. I got up and moved an amendment to your motion. I moved a motion that said therefore, nothing in this clause shall confer on the Government of Quebec powers, rights, privileges or status not conferred on the other provinces. And when that came to a vote, Mr. Charest absented himself from the house and you stood up with the separatists and voted it down.

If your position is that this does not confer powers, why in heaven's name didn't you support our motion? It's the only conceivable way I could think of getting that concept through any of the other legislatures.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I'm very happy that you say that you can live with a distinct society concept in Canada if it is not giving some special powers to Quebec. Mr. Duceppe said a minute ago that it is not giving special powers to the Quebec government.

MR. MANNING: You would not put that in writing, nor would you put it in law.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: The question is the recognition.

MR. MANNING: Why wouldn't you put it into law? Why wouldn't you put in law what you say your position is? That's what the provinces are asking.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Are you willing to accept it?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Can we be clear on one thing in regards this debate? It's an issue of identity. It is not about special status. It's not about more privilege. It's not about more money. It never has been, and anyone who says it is is deliberately misleading Canadians on this issue. I regret that.

For example, Ms McDonough and I may disagree on a lot things, but, on this issue, I was happy to hear her comments because she represents, I think, a proud tradition of national politicians who are dedicated to bringing Canadians together. Those who further try to divide us on this issue I think are rendering a great disservice to the country.

What we're talking about here is recognizing the fact that, since 1774, way before Sir John A. Macdonald in 1867, we had in this country a French language and culture that is alive and well and dynamic. It is part of our identity whether we speak French or not, and it is for us a great source of pride. It is for Canada a great source of accomplishment.

Why can't we say that? Why can't we say, "I'm proud of this, and this is something I want to pass on to my children?" That's what the issue is about.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Because we've been trying for so many years, Mr. Charest, and yourself, you modified the Meech agreement back in 1990 with Jean Chrétien, and you were on the same stage --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: That's a falsehood.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: -- '92 and in '95, always against Quebec. There is more than 2 million people that voted for sovereignty last time.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You're not interested in any solution because you're a separatist.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: We're proposing a new solution.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You want a country that is completely separated from Canada, and, in doing that, you always talk about referendum. This is terrible for Quebec. You've lost two referendum, and you do not accept the will of Quebec who want to stay in Canada. You talk referendum and separation, and the money is quitting Quebec. Who is paying the price? It is the workers in Quebec who pay the price.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Mr. Chrétien, you made a lot of promises back in 1980.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We're four who want to solve the problem.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: I'm asking you, Mr. Chrétien, will you accept a "yes" vote in the next referendum like we are accepting the results of last referendum, because we're still in Canada? If there is a "yes" vote, will you accept the result?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: What would be the question, sir? Will it be another lobster trap like the one that was described last week in Quebec, or will it be an honest clear question?

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: It was an honest, clear question.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You said to the Quebeckers, "Let's have a partnership", and you said, "We will negotiate a partnership." In your mind, you wanted just to proclaim independence.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Are you telling me that if the "yes" had won last the referendum, as a Canadian but as a Quebecker also, you would have refused to negotiate with Quebec, with a mandate in Quebec, negotiate a new partnership? Is that what you're telling me.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You had no intention of negotiating anything. Mr. Parizeau, and even in Rimouski five days before the referendum, Mr. Bouchard said that he had, like Parizeau, the intention of moving first for sovereignty, but let's talk about solving the problem.

MR. MANNING: Can we come back to the initial question? This is the wrangling we hear among Quebec politicians every day of our lives in the house, but let's come back to the original question.

MS McDONOUGH: Nobody's become more embroiled in this than Preston Manning. Nobody's become more embroiled in the constitutional wrangling than Preston Manning.

MR. MANNING: In the referendum you told Canadians not to worry. I went to see you 16 months before that referendum. I was worried sick. The way you fight a dream is with another dream, not with administrative tinkering. And you told me, as you told the public -- I give you credit, you said the same in private as you did public -- there was nothing to worry about, all we had to do was manage the federation a little better and communicate a little bitter and things would work out fine, and you almost blew it, sir.

Now the question is, if you do that again, you will really blow it and you do not deserve a second chance unless you have a fresh vision of federalism.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Mr. Manning, if you want to help, you just said that you had no problem with distinct society if it means what I said it means.

MR. MANNING: Listen to exactly what I said. Will you once listen to an alternative solution?

Why not base the future on equality of citizens and provinces? That is saleable in every province in this country. Why not offer to each province a bundle of rights; resource, social services and jurisdiction over language and culture? Give it to them all so they're treated equally, but allow them to use it to develop distinctive features.

Thirdly, why don't you focus the federal government on ten big areas of national and international importance? That formula can be sold in every part of the country, but it's an alternative to special status.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: The problem, Mr. Manning, is for you there is no difference in our society. There is not one province that is exactly the same. We voted in the House of Commons not long ago --

MR. MANNING: You're not listening to what I said.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: -- to change the constitution of Newfoundland because, in Newfoundland, they have a system of education that is different than Alberta and B.C.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Chrétien, you're not listening and it's this not listening that could cost the country. When I say give each province a bundle of rights and then allow them to develop the distinctive features of their economy and their society, I am talking about a greater approach to recognizing distinctiveness than anything that has ever occurred to you.

What's wrong with that?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: On this issue of recognizing the equality of the provinces, on April 16, 1981, the Government of Quebec, in a formal document with other provinces, was ready to recognize equality of the provinces, but, frankly, the problem I have with you, Mr. Manning, on this issue in particular, is that all I hear in regards to Canada coming from you is always negative. I never get a sense that there's something positive we have built together. I don't get a sense that you see a role for the national government. It's all massive devolution now, which is as wrong as massive centralization was. I happen to think that there is a role for the national government --

MR. MANNING: You don't listen.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: -- that there is something constructive about Canada, that, if we're going to succeed, we're going to have to stop and make sure that Canadians have a good sense of what they have accomplished together and then move forward.

This idea, a covenant in health care, trade, and education I think is going to go a long way in re-establishing our sense of confidence, demonstrating that the federation can operate differently, make a commitment to the basic values we have, and then set the table for the more difficult debate on how we have to bring about some change.

But don't be mistaken: Even though Mr. Duceppe tonight doesn't like the word "distinct society", has anyone mistaken that he's actually ever supported it, or that he ever will in the future? His goal is quite clear -- it's to separate the country. We know that.

Let's reach out to the majority of people in Quebec, and I'm sorry to inform you of this, Mr. Duceppe, including the majority of people who speak French who want this country to work and succeed. And the biggest challenge I've set for myself is to connect them with other Canadians so that they can go forward together.

I have news for you. I intend to make this country work, because if there's one commitment I made to my children, is that I'm going to pass on to them the country I received from my parents. I'm determined to make that happen.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Coming back to the Charlottetown agreement --

THE MODERATOR: I'm sorry to say, but the agreed-upon time limit has run out. My apologies. We will now turn to the audience questions.

MR. BOURBEAU: I have with me Robert Scroso (ph). He lives in Montreal, and he has a question for Mr. Manning.

Q. Mr. Manning, you spoke of equality for all Canadians, but how does your plan address the native concerns in Canada?

MR. MANNING: Thank you for raising that question in the context of national unity, because the equality principle would apply there, or the special status approach. We propose to do away with the federal Department of Indian Affairs. We think that the vast amount of money poured in the top never gets to ordinary aboriginal people. We propose to support local aboriginal government, but our concept of local aboriginal government is more along the line of municipal government for aboriginal people on reserve, like the local government powers given to other Canadians.

That's how we propose to treat all people equally, give aboriginals on reserve the same tools that you give to other Canadians, only this form of municipal government would essentially be federally chartered.

Our view is if you could give aboriginal people the tools that other Canadians have in the form of local governments, and in the sense of some of the private enterprise tools, that this is the key to the development of our aboriginal people in a way and at a level that they've not experienced heretofore.

MS FREISEN: This is Richard Mews (ph) from Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He has a question for Mr. Duceppe.

Q. Good evening. I'm from Nova Scotia, and I can tell you that the people of Atlantic provinces have extreme concerns over a separatist Quebec. How would you address your fellow Canadians in those provinces if Quebec does separate? What role do they play in Canada?

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Well, what we're basically saying is that Quebeckers are a nation, just like Canadians are a nation, just like the Americans are a nation. Having a sovereign Quebec, two nations with two countries, and developing a new partnership with Canada instead of discussing all those agreements we've tried to reach, and we have always failed since the last 30 years. Instead of putting all our energy on those discussions, we should accept that Quebec is different, that we are facing two nations, two different countries, and with a new partnership.

I mean, that's exactly what they did in Europe, having sovereign countries collaborating freely in larger economic organizations. That's what we're proposing. That's the way of the future.

MR. BOURBEAU: I have with me here Patrick Garbut (ph). He lives here in Ottawa, and he has a question for Chrétien.

Q. Mr. Chrétien, I think most people are really tired of the unity issue. It's a fact. Are we ever going to be able to meet the demands of the separatists without separating our country? Will it continue like a spoiled child? The more they get, the more they're going to want

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, sir, I think I can understand your frustration, but it's been a struggle to keep this country together since 1867, and there will always be people who will want to propose separation. That's part of a democratic society.

But I do believe that if we all work together and we do not use a partisanship approach to try to score political points, and if we make sure that we have the same speech in Quebec that we have in Alberta and elsewhere, that will be very useful. If everybody wants to really keep the country together, we have to be generous, because when you're in a minority, you always feel insecure.

I am one of the Quebeckers francophone, and the insecurity living in North America with virtually 300 million people speaking English creates a lot of insecurity. If we gave them the guarantee that they will be respected in their dignity of being francophone, they will want to stay in Canada.

That's why my approach has been to solve one problem at a time, to make sure that Canada functions well. In the last referendum, they were arguing that they were living in a bankrupt nation, that they should not stay in Canada because of that. Now Canada is doing very well compared to others, and the people, if we show the generosity that we the federalists like Mr. Charest and myself and Madam McDonough are showing here tonight, they will want to stay in Canada because they realize that they are welcome in Canada and that their future is really in this great country that we all love.

THE MODERATOR: I believe I'm getting some words in my ear, and perhaps we ended the debate a little bit prematurely.

Mr. Duceppe, we do apologize that the timing seemed to have been mistaken, and perhaps you would like to respond to some of the earlier comments.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Well, we said it again and again. We've been trying to reach an agreement with Canada, and I think that Meech and Charlottetown were the very last steps. It's very clear that we can't reform that country.

The way we see countries in Europe, and even in North America with NAFTA, having different nations having their own countries, and those countries collaborating in larger economic organizations, that's exactly what we're proposing. I don't see why Canadians should be against such a proposal instead of discussing again and again and again like we did since the last 35 years.

And what you promised back in 1980, when you made that Constitution of 1982, you know that no government of Quebec ever recognized that Constitution, being a federalist government or sovereignist government. You know that pretty well, Mr. Chrétien. You know there's no solution to that problem. You know there's more than 2 million people in Quebec supporting sovereignty, and you know one day, and sooner than we think, we'll have our country. You know that pretty well.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Duceppe.

We now come to our fifth and our final theme for this evening, which is how well Parliament serves Canadians.

Jason, I believe you have a question for Gilles Duceppe.

MR. MOSCOVITZ: Mr. Duceppe, you would know as well as anyone in the country how regionally based the last Parliament was. Everybody knows that the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition, had representatives from Quebec only, and, with the exception of one MP from Ontario, how the Reform Party had representatives from Western Canada only.

The question is the following: How well or how poorly do you think Canadians have been served by this regional-based opposition?

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: I don't consider the Bloc as a regional party; I consider it as a national party because Quebec is a nation. It's also, I think, a good thing for Canadian democracy that, for the first time in history, the main actors is debating the most important political question, which is the relations between Canada and Quebec, were in the House of Commons.

That was the first time that Canadians heard sovereignists discussing and debating with federalists in the House of Commons. Before, it was only federalists there telling that Quebeckers were not serious, sovereignists were not serious. For the first time, I think Quebec sent a very clear message to the rest of Canada.

It was not the first time that we were facing an official opposition with people only from a region. We had Tories before with only one member in Quebec. We lived through that. I think that the Bloc expressed the reality that Canadians didn't know before.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Well, I do happen to think, and in fact I do know, that Canadians felt that something was very wrong in the last Parliament of Canada. Here we had two regional parties whose view of the country stopped at the Ottawa River. Frankly, I don't think they care very much about what was beyond that river, and that led to a situation where we had a national government that wasn't accountable, that could do whatever they want. Mr. Chrétien, for all intents and purposes, was skating alone on the ice shooting pucks in an empty net.

Evidence of that is in this election campaign. We're only a few days into it and all of a sudden he discovers health care. And then they started the election campaign saying there was no money at all. Then they found money, billions of dollars, on Tuesday. Of course, being the Liberal government, they spent it all on Wednesday. And so here we have typically an election campaign that is forcing him to be accountable.

But what is the most disturbing about all this is the lack of leadership in regards to how we bring Canadians together, but it's no wonder that they've been able to slash health care. Mr. Manning has been more busy putting out fires in his own caucus than fighting the health care cuts. Mr. Duceppe's been more obsessed with separation.

We want to see more balance and a national alternative. That's what I've been preparing for the last three years.

MS McDONOUGH: I think it's evident that this Parliament has been a disaster for Canadians. We've had a federal Liberal government that's been sitting on its big, fat majority for three and a half years, accountable to nobody; a government that was elected to be everything that the Brian Mulroney government wasn't and has picked up the Tory torch and been running with it ever since, in fact torching the things that matter most to Canadians, which is having jobs, health care, education for their kids, and a reasonable, fair tax system.

Why? Why have they been getting away with it? Because we have one political party that doesn't want Canada to work for Canadians and another opposition party that doesn't want government to work for Canadians. Both of these gentlemen are busy trying to convince Canadians that we should tear Canada apart and we should tear government down.

We've made government work much better for Canadians in the past. With the presence of New Democrats, we've always been able to make a difference. That's how we got medicare. That's how we got the public pensions. That's how we've gotten a lot of the things that Canadians value most.

MR. MANNING: I have several suggestions at how to make Parliament work better, but I'd like to analyze the composition that Canadian Parliament of little differently than you did, Jason.

If you look at our Parliament, you really see three constitutional or unity options. You see the status quo federalists who say the federation is basically okay the way it is. You've got to tinker with it a little bit, but it will survive. They're the ones that have brought to the brink of the national unity disaster.

You see the separatists who want to break up the federation. And there's a third group, and that is Reform, that wants to reform the federation as the best way to keep it together.

In the last election, the west expressed its discontent with the federation by sending reformers. Quebec expressed its discontent by sending separatists. In this election, what is absolutely crucial is what Ontario and Atlantic Canada do. If Ontario and Atlantic Canada endorse the status quo, that sends the wrong signal both east and west, but if Ontario and Atlantic Canada would come down hard on reforming the federation, that could be the thing that unifies our country.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me, what is very important in politics is to be able to have a program that you can talk about in every part of Canada, not to be afraid to say what you think in Alberta. I was in Calgary. I was not afraid to talk about distinct society. In Quebec, I talk about the same thing. It's why we have managed to have members elected in every part of Canada because our main preoccupation is to have policies that are known by everybody and respect diversity in unity. This has been the history of our party.

We believe that the government can play a force for good in society, that we can use the government, but the government should not be in everything. So having an agenda that is acceptable to the country is what is needed for Parliament to work well.

Unfortunately, the parties have taken views that are too extreme and not acceptable for all parts of Canada. It's why only the Liberal Party got the benefit of the situation.

MR. MOSCOVITZ: Mr. Duceppe, the backdrop of the 1993 election was all the anger and hostility that Canadians had for politicians and the political process. A lot of the anger has subsided, but, instead of open hostility, there's a lot of indifference now. Polls tell us that people aren't that interested in this campaign. There's a great deal of indifference.

Why do you think politicians have not succeeded in restoring confidence in Canadians with the political system?

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Well, when we look at the federal government, the Liberal government we had promised to abolish the GST, promising to settle the problems with Quebec. Nothing of that was done. But more largely I would say that we have to discuss and debate with people and represent them in the House of Commons as well as in any Parliament. And that's why the Bloc is there. It's not only to be in power. Democracy is about representing the people who elected us in each riding, and that's what we're doing with the Bloc Quebecois; discussing with people, representing them and, most of the time, when you look at the vote taken at the House of Commons, the NDP supported the Bloc Quebecois, most of the time when we were defending the unemployed, when we were denouncing the family trusts. So that's the kind of job we have to do to get the respect of the people.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: This also points to the longer-term problem on this issue and Mr. Duceppe said it very well. In the longer term, there are Bloc members who got themselves elected in the province of Quebec. The real issue is, if we're going to deal with this problem, whether or not we're going to reach out to national political parties and national leaders who are relevant to every part of the country.

I also travelled to Calgary and then, the next night, travelled to Chicoutimi, and travelled to every part of this country.

One of the very important commitments to make this country function, because we're blessed with all this geography but have a small population base and great deal of diversity, is to make a very strong commitment to national parties that are going to connect Canadians among them. But in the end, make no mistake about it, my objective is clear: If there's a political party that can defeat the Bloc where they are in the province of Quebec, we're going to do that job. And that's where we'll start by a reunited Canadians, by focusing what they have in common, by having them recognize that in Quebec a majority of people, and again a majority of francophones, I'm sorry to say to Mr. Duceppe, badly want this country to work.

Well I have news for him. I intend to connect him to Canadians in Calgary, Canadians in Come By Chance in Newfoundland, or wherever they live, and intend to make this country work. That's where we're going to start.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: Are you telling me that the people in Quebec are supporting Plan B, just as Jean Chrétien and just as Preston Manning? That's what you said very clearly. Are you telling me that people are supporting Plan B?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: What I know, Mr. Duceppe, is that a majority of people -- a vast majority, not just a simple, a vast majority of people in Quebec want the Canadian federation to work. Your own policy advisor Mr. Turp recognized that a few months ago and embarrassed your party. I think you would probably, if you were honest tonight, recognize the same thing. What they need though is an opportunity and they need the leadership able to connect them to other Canadians.

THE MODERATOR: Can we let Mr. Manning make his point.

MR. MANNING: This issue is not going do be resolved by wrangling around by Quebec politicians. It's going to have to be resolved by others. But I think the issue that's always being avoided here, it's a question of trust in the Parliament. The only way you're going to restore trust in Parliament is for politicians to show their trust in the people.

I come back to this issue I tried to raise earlier of accountability. I think until there is greater accountability -- I mean, Mr. Chrétien, you broke the three biggest promises in your Red Book. People refer to your Red Book like they do the Bre-X prospectus. Don't go near a helicopter.

The only way to get accountability, that I can think of, is to put in the hands of the voters the tools to hold us accountable, and the best one is recall; the power to fire an elected official who breaks his word or breaks his promises.

Now, are you or are you not prepared to support that step to restore accountability to the Parliament of Canada?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I don't believe, as I said, in by-elections every month. It's not the way that the system works. We have a plan. We go to the people, we explain our plan. We say what we want to do. When you're the government, you do your best. You're not sure that you will achieve everything, but I'm very proud of what we have achieved.

In some areas, I'm sorry we have not been able to do what we wanted to do. We wanted to harmonize the sales tax with all the provinces. Unfortunately, and I'm sorry, we were not able to do that. But you look at the totality of what we have done.

MR. MANNING: We're not talking about falling short.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: We did better than expected and we promised on the deficit. I never mentioned in my program last time that one of the great successes of the last four years had been Team Canada when we went abroad with all the premiers and 450 people going abroad selling goods and services that the Canadians were able to sell in a global market.

MR. MANNING: We're not talking, Mr. Chrétien --

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: You look at the totality of what we've done and people pass judgment.

MR. MANNING: We're not talking about you falling short on certain policy objectives. We're talking about when you make an explicit promise and break it, the people have no way of yanking your chain in between elections.

Now, do you believe that people should be given a chain that they could yank so that when you say, "I'll kill the GST" and you don't, there's something they can do between elections?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: I just said to you that we did not succeed in GST to do what we wanted to do. We talked in the Red Book about harmonization with the provincial government. We have done it with four provinces and we have not been able to do it with all the provinces. So I'm sorry, but look at the totality --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Here we are back to the Red Book. You broke your promise on the GST, you broke it on jobs, you broke it on NAFTA, you broke it on child care, you broke it on the CBC, you broke your guarantee on education and health. Those are the promises you broke, Mr. Chrétien, and saying to Canadians that you're sorry they misunderstood you isn't going to wash, or quoting them the fine print from the Red Book is only going to remind them that the Red Book ended up being Red Face Book II when it was put out during this election campaign.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Charest, would you commit to a recall? How do people hold you accountable for keeping your promises between elections?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I think accountability has something to do also, Mr. Manning, with leadership, and I think a lot of Canadians were troubled with the fact that, in regards to your own party on leadership, that when you were faced with a situation of intolerance, that you ended up throwing out the main stream members of your own party and keeping onside or giving a two-minute penalty to the extremists in your own party.

MR. MANNING: You're avoiding the question of how do you help --

HON. JEAN CHAREST: That's an issue of accountability.

MR. MANNING: How are you held accountable when you break your promises?

MS McDONOUGH: Mr. Manning, could I ask you a question on this same issue of accountability? You're very big on accountability of the government, and you should be, and that's what an effective opposition is about.

Where does your accountability come in when you supported the GST and you supported the harmonization of the GST? No wonder you couldn't stand up to this government and hold them accountable for breaking the commitment --

MR. MANNING: We did not support the harmonization of the GST. We did not do that.

MS McDONOUGH: You said when you got into that Parliament --

MR. MANNING: We did not do that.

MS McDONOUGH: -- governments can't do anything about jobs and you did nothing about jobs --

MR. MANNING: I think you're talking about somebody else.

MS McDONOUGH: -- and you did nothing about jobs until the last few months leading into this election. You did not perform your role as effective opposition when this government was cutting health care and cutting education and cutting the CBC and cutting its commitment to child care.

MR. MANNING: You asked me a question. Let me respond to your question.

MS McDONOUGH: Why? Because as the opposition you weren't doing anything to stand up to them on any of those things. You were saying cut further, cut faster, cut deeper, cut into the bone marrow.

Is there any accountability for opposition parties?

MR. MANNING: You asked me a question and give me an opportunity to answer it.

On accountability, the old CCF, which gave birth to your party, used to believe in this concept of recall and referendum and free votes. It's where the democratic came in the New Democratic Party.

Are you prepared to be held accountable in that way, to support a recall provision, so that you could be held accountable for the promises you make in this campaign?

MS McDONOUGH: I would have been delighted and will be delighted after June 2 to be in the House of Commons being an effective opposition, not talking out of both sides of my mouth for three years and suddenly, on the eve of the election --

MR. MANNING: Let the record show that none of these people will support recall or accountability.

MS McDONOUGH: -- discovering jobs, health care, education and child poverty as issues that you should be addressing.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Mr. Manning, you yourself, you were always lecturing us on free votes. We had much more free votes on our side --

MR. MANNING: That's not correct.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: -- because you could not control your troops. The problem is -- and I don't blame you, you have to be a leader and make decisions according to the reality of the day. In politics -- I've been in politics a long time, and you know a lot about politics because your father was there, and some times it's difficult to govern. There is no easy solution.

A lot of people promise easy solutions. It's the toughest job in the land, but look at the result. Look at the result. The IMF said that Canada will have the best performance of all the industrialized world in 1997 and 1998, the same Canada that was considered as a basket case in 1993.

MR. MANNING: You can go all around --

Ms McDonough: And one of the worst records on child poverty among all industrialized nations.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: And we ranked 14 in the OECD on unemployment rates.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: I think I may have found the answer on accountability you were looking for. It will happen on June 2, 1997. It will happen for Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Manning; for everyone. I think that on that day Canadians are going to want to look to the future, they're not going to want to look to the past, and they're going to also want to look in the end to national leaders and parties that are able to reach out to every part of Canada. That will be the ultimate accountability for each and every one of us here.

MR. MANNING: What has happened here is that all the leaders have gone all around the mulberry bush but they have rejected the three basic tools to establish greater accountability in the Parliament. One is free votes, the other is referendum, and the other is a recall mechanism.

THE MODERATOR: On that note, I'm going to again say time is out. We are running out of the big time towards 11, so that is our final round and I thank you all.

Now we go to our last group of questions.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm here with Patricia Fry. She lives in Dunsford, Ontario, and she has a question for Mr. Manning.

Q. Mr. Manning, it seems to me that the problems of aboriginal peoples, which you earlier mentioned, have historically been rooted in brilliant parliamentary solutions of politicians such as yourself imposing assimilationist policies and trying to make these peoples the same as all other Canadians. I would like to know how many aboriginal peoples you have consulted about your brilliant municipal government scheme.

MR. MANNING: Well, we've consulted quite a few. Before I ever got into politics, I spent 20 years in management consulting in Alberta. One of my areas of work was working with trying to improve relations between aboriginals and energy companies. A lot of my experience in this area came before I ever got into Parliament.

The problems that you refer to in how the federal government has dealt with aboriginal people -- and I consider it one of the scandals, both a social and economic scandal in the magnitude of a tragedy -- all occurred under Liberal or Tory administrations. What we're saying is the way to help aboriginal people not be assimilated to any degree that they do not want to be is to give them the powers at local government level to develop the distinctive features of their own economies and their societies. That's the purpose behind our decentralization approach with respect to aboriginal people.

MS FREISEN: This is Caroline Ward from Montreal. She has a question for Mr. Charest.

Q. Hello Mr. Charest. My question is on the subject of how Parliament is serving Canadians, how you feel about the option of partition as a means of representation.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Thank you, Caroline. You being from Montreal, you'd obviously be very concerned about all of this debate and what impact it would have on your life. I guess the most honest answer that anyone could offer you in regards to what would happen on partition is that if ever we as a country cross that line where there's a "yes" vote, we're all walking in to a black hole.

There are no rules. History has taught us that. Everything that we know about conflicts around the world equally also teaches us that. A few events in the last few days have reminded us of that, but let me just return to what it is exactly we are facing.

A, there are no legal provisions in our Constitution to separate the country. There are no countries -- I think the old Soviet Union may have had dispositions to do that, but that was about it. There is no country in the world that contemplates its own disappearance. So it's illegal to separate, we know that.

In international law there are no rules either. Try to refer to one instance where international law was able to impose its will on a group of people if they didn't want that to happen.

So, the most honest -- and maybe very sobering also -- but the most honest answer is to say that this is a black hole and that there will be no rules.

That being sobering -- if I can just add this -- doesn't it make it even more compelling to make the country work? Thank you.

MR. BOURBEAU: I'm with Phillip Thomas (ph) who lives in St. Catharines, Ontario. He has a question for Mr. Chrétien.

Q. We've heard a lot of talk about voter apathy in the early part of this campaign. Canadians have seen a lot of broken promises. We're pretty cynical towards politicians. All of the politicians, all of the parties put together policy platforms and booklets and CD-ROMs, but for the most part Canadians don't pay any attention to those things because they really don't believe what's said in them.

My question is, how much responsibility do you take for the high level of voter apathy and what are you doing to improve the situation?

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: For me I know that the people are very often very unhappy or don't like very much their governments, but there is one thing I'd like to say to you. We are elected to serve. I spent my life in public life and I know that all my colleagues do their best. We disagree, but we are there to serve. And it's very difficult, and it's why it's very difficult to be reasonable, to be middle of the ground, not to have the easiness of doctrinaire approach.

But for me I believe that politicians serve well, and we're very lucky in Canada. We have a level of public service that is probably one of the best in the world, and it's the same thing with the level of public service in Canada.

And what is good is we know that the people are watching us and they have the right to vote for us and we have to gain their confidence.

For me, it's going to be my 11th election. I've been elected nine times in Quebec and one time in New Brunswick, and every time I felt that it was a great honour that the people in this riding gave me their confidence and voting for me, and I have always done my best. I've not been perfect, I don't claim I'm perfect, but I've had a lot of experience and I try to find a reasonable solution in situations that are very difficult.

And it is the way that I believe people can still vote for politicians who are committed like I think I have been over the last 30 years.

MS FREISEN: This is Hugh Laroux (ph) from Gloucester, Ontario. He has a question for Mr. Duceppe.

Q. Good evening. I'd like to know how you can compare yourself to the Tory opposition a few years back when they had representatives at least in Quebec in the ridings when you didn't have any outside of Quebec the last election.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: They had one member from Quebec. Out of 75 ridings, there were 74 Liberals and only one Tory. But the question is more important than that. In democracy we have the right to be represented by the people we chose. Quebeckers are paying taxes in Canada. They have the right to be represented in the House of Commons. And they voted, and they will vote for the Bloc Quebecois again because they feel we representing their interests. And as long as we're paying taxes, we'll be there. That's an old lesson from the American Revolution: No taxation without representation.

So we are there. I think it's also good for Canadian democracy since the main actors concerning the most important political debate in Canada are there to debate that question of the relations between Quebec and Canada.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We have time if we have one very, very quick last question, Jacques.

MR. BOURBEAU: I've been promised it will be. I'm with Lindsey Patrick (ph). She lives in Ottawa and she has a question for Mr. Charest.

Q. In your platform you talk about cutting the budget, reducing taxes, but what federal functions are you going to cut to be able to balance the books?

HON. JEAN CHAREST: We're going to look at federal programs spending. Among the things we want to do is merge departments -- the departments of natural resources, fisheries, agriculture and environment -- into one single department of sustainable development.

One of things we want to do is privatize the department of Public Works because we think there are a lot of things that the private sector can do better. The main functions of Public Works would go over to Treasury Board.

There are cost savings that we're proposing also in the way that government operates. We've detailed it all in this plan, Let the Future Begin. We're the only party, by the way, that has included the numbers on both spending cuts and cost savings. They've been verified. There's a technical note at the end of this also.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for your very brief answer, Mr. Charest.

It's now time to turn to the closing remarks. Again, there has been a draw to determine the order and, Jean Charest, back to you.

HON. JEAN CHAREST: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you about the future of our country tonight. At the beginning of my remarks you may remember that I said that leadership matters, and it matter very much for this country. It can make a real difference.

I hope that you have had a chance to learn more about the kind of person that I am, but also the kind of leadership that I want to offer to Canada. You deserve leadership that has the courage to attempt what may seem to others as being impossible. You also deserve leadership that will also bring to this job a real determination to never give up. Whether it's the unemployed or health care or those who are poor, we need leadership that will always be determined to keep our country together and keep it moving. And you also deserve leadership with new ideas; ideas that will really make a difference.

My challenge in the election campaign now is to go out there and reach out to as many Canadians as possible and to offer them an opportunity to look at my plan, to compare -- and I invite that comparison -- to compare the leaders, compare the plans, the ideas, our perspective for the future.

I believe we offer the choices which can best offer our country a move forward; a move forward together. And I also need your help. I need your help to build a new Canadian coalition so that Canadians can move forward together into this next century.

What I want to do is three things: I want to bring taxes down so that hard work can be reworded and more work created. I want to build up the health care system so that it will be there when you need it. And I want to draw on the will of Canadians to stay united and strong so that we can also move forward together.

Thank you tonight for listening, for being with us, and I look forward to your confidence on the second of June.

MR. MANNING: At the beginning of this debate I challenged you to consider whether you want more of the same or whether you want a fresh start, and based on what you have heard, do you want a country in which big government is at the centre of things, more of the same, or do you want a fresh start for Canada which puts you and your family at the centre of things? Do you want a country in which Canadians are extended special status with all the wrangling about what that means and definition, or do you want Reform's fresh start for Canada where the unifying principle of our great country is equality of citizens and provinces?

Even if you like what you hear, you may ask, how can I trust anyone? You have little faith in promises of politicians because of the track record on broken promises. Well, you can chose more of the same, more broken promises, politicians who ignore you between elections, or you can chose a fresh start; a commitment from us that is not guaranteed by promises but is a real democratic guarantee.

Reform's fresh start guarantee will give you the power of recall; the right to fire an elected official who loses your trust. It will include a commitment to free vote so that your MP works for you rather than the party whip or the Prime Minister or the party leader, and it includes the right to use referendum and citizens' initiatives mechanisms to direct the Parliament when it fails to respect your wishes.

The Reform Party believes that this is a fresh approach that Canadians are looking for in the 1997 federal election. You have told us the kind of country that you want for yourselves and your children. We invite you to use the Reform Party of Canada as a vehicle to reach that new Canada.

Thank you.

MR. GILLES DUCEPPE: This evening we have discussed many of the issues facing Quebec and Canada, both social and economic. Over the last three years, the Bloc Quebecois has taken clear stands on all of these issues. In fact, the voice of the Bloc has been heard and has made a difference, especially for those too often without a voice; workers, the poor and the unemployed. The Bloc Quebecois intends to continue its work by pushing for jobs and long overdue fiscal reform.

But tonight we have also dealt with important political issues. For almost half of this century, Quebeckers have been claiming more powers for the government in Quebec City, and clearly this is not likely to change. Half a century of constitutional discussions on the divisions of powers culminated in the failures of Meech and Charlottetown.

Quebeckers are tired, as Canadians, of going around and around the same issues. At the eve of the 21st century this merry-go-round must stop. We must all face the fact that the only visible solution is the sovereignty of Quebec and a new partnership with Canada; a partnership as desirable as it is inevitable for the two peoples who have links as strong as ours.

May our common values of tolerance and understanding allow us to face serenely these changes which we believe to be essential for the future wellbeing of our two people.

Thank you.

RT. HON. JEAN CHRÉTIEN: Canadians are reasonable people. You do not expect your government to perform miracles, but you have every right to expect it to work hard, to plan for the future, to be responsible, to be honest, and that means being straight with people about the facts, about options, and consequences.

That is why I refuse to try to buy your votes with a premature tax cut or with reckless spending that will take away all the gains we have made together since 1993. That is why I will not gamble with our very future as a country with divisive rhetoric. We have always progressed as a country by taking a reasonable, responsible course, by working together to find common grounds.

I pledge to continue the job we started in 1993. We are on the right track and will stay on track to balance our budget once and for all, to work on job creation, to invest in health care, in children, in education, learning and innovation. Serving as your Prime Minister is a great honour and a great responsibility. A Canadian Prime Minister must serve all the citizens in all regions of our country fairly and equally. I love Canada. I have great faith in its people and great confidence in its future, and that is why I ask for your support on June 2.

Thank you very much and good night.

MS McDONOUGH: I want to leave you with some final thoughts on Canada's future. When you voted in the last election you didn't vote for $7 billion of cuts in health and education, but that's what you got. You didn't vote in the last election to keep 1.5 million Canadians out of work, but that's what you got. You didn't vote in the last election for Liberals to implement Conservative and Reform policies, but that's what you got.

How did it happen? Because Parliament was lopsided. There is a solution. When this campaign began, the New Democratic Party became equal participants in the political process for the first time since 1993. And since that time, we've had more discussion, more attention, more debate on the critical issues of jobs, health care, education, poverty, and fair taxes in three and a half weeks than we've seen in Parliament in three and a half years.

We put those priorities on the agenda and after the next election we want to make sure those issues are front and centre in the next Parliament.

Vote NDP this time and that's what you'll get. We can do better in Canada. Help us fight for that. Together we can build the Canada that we all want; a country of opportunity and hope; a country in which everyone has a chance to succeed and nobody is left behind.

Thank you and good night.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you all. That concludes tonight's debate. Its purpose was really quite straightforward; to give the voters a chance to find out just a little bit more about the important choice that they'll be making on June 2. I thank you, the leaders. I thank the journalists. I thank our special audience and I thank you for being with us tonight. Good night.#

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