Mr. Speaker, I agree completely with the hon. member. As I was saying, with their motion the Liberals wanted to intervene in fields of provincial jurisdiction. That was their aim. But they did not act in areas of federal responsibility. My colleague is perfectly right.
For example, in the apparel and textiles sectors, we had to have the Huntingdon tragedy, when six plants closed, to be entitled to a semblance of an assistance plan. Yet it was known for a long time that the Chinese quotas were going to disappear on January 1, 2006.
The Liberals are responsible for the fragility of the manufacturing sector. That is probably why they did not want to include in the motion the responsibilities that fall to the federal government. They are right. We have to ask them what they actually did, in their 13 years in power, to improve the rate of investment in research and development relative to GDP. We are still bringing up the rear. At every conference I attend, everyone says that Canada has to do more research and development. I have been hearing that for 15 years. We are still lagging behind. It is the federal government's responsibility to ensure that Canada is leading the pack on research and development.
The same goes for vocational training. That is a provincial responsibility, but the fiscal imbalance could have been corrected by the previous government. Let us hope that it will be corrected by the new government by February 2007.
It is the same thing again for industrial policy. We should have had an industrial policy that articulates sector development with regional development. The federal government has not been engaged in regional development for years. There has been a withdrawal of investment in social programs, with extremely harmful impacts in many regions.
For example, my region has lost $29 million in employment insurance because the program's accessibility was cut back. As a result, economic activity in the region has slowed down. That is the fault of the federal government under the Liberal regime.
I remain hopeful that the Conservatives will take a more interesting direction, even if I do not believe they will.