I know Quebecers don't want to relive old battles; they prefer to build for the future.
For me, unemployment and poverty in the Greater Montreal area is not mainly a problem of structure, or design, or statistics. It is a profoundly human situation.
Despite our high rate of unemployment, 300,000 jobs go unfilled largely because many of the unemployed lack the skills needed today as a result of technological progress.
Governments allocate enormous resources for social programs. And it is true that for many years we have had one of the best social service systems in the world. Yet we are still incapable of meeting the needs of tens of thousands of Canadian families.
Since the end of the Second World War, our population has more than doubled to 27 million people.
It would be naive to imagine we have solved all our income security problems simply because the roles of the federal and provincial governments in the area of skills training have been clarified.
An increasing number of Canadians must juggle the demands of work with the need to care for children, or for family members who are ill or too frail to care for themselves. Our programs have simply not kept pace with these societal changes.
We plan to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the preparation of the budget. We also plan to open up the process of government appointments.
Quebecers have rarely in their history been better represented than they are right now - at the highest levels of the federal government.
