Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is partly right. When he says that this is not in the best interest of the other provinces, he must be speaking of only one province, namely Ontario, because the others all agree with us. It would be in the best interest of Ontario, though, because business will be carried out there.
The hon. member has worked in the field of financial markets. I have been an entrepreneur myself and I liked it better to have my business activities supervised by Quebec than by Canada. Why? Because Quebec uses proximity management and, if and when it has to step in, it does so through a direct guarantor. No need to go through Ottawa or Toronto only to have them tell Quebec what to do.
That is precisely what Ms. Jérôme-Forget emphasized in her letter to the Minister of Finance, when she wrote:
Accordingly, I will continue to oppose the implementation of any model leading to the concentration of market oversight responsibilities in the hands of a common or single regulator, regardless of how you call it.
That is what Ms. Jérôme-Forget wrote in her reply on behalf of Quebec and Premier Charest, who is a former Conservative leader. He has realized that the best interest of the provinces and Quebec is not served, and especially not that of financiers, by a centralized body.
She added:
—the federal government could apply its energies much more productively if, in its fields of jurisdiction, it worked to more effectively crack down on economic crime rather than trying—