Pierre De Savoye

[Option Canada, April 13th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Bloc Quebecois asked the solicitor general to launch a police investigation into the Option Canada affair. He replied that he would read our letter and get back to us.

Has the solicitor general now asked the RCMP to investigate Option Canada?

[Option Canada, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, since the auditor general said so himself two years ago, the operations of Option Canada have yet to be clarified, and we still have no idea how the $4.8 million was used.

Will the solicitor general give us the assurance that he will act on the letter I sent him today asking to set up a police investigation to discover where the $4.8 million given Option Canada went?

[Option Canada, April 10th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to enlighten the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

How could they sit by, no questions asked, while $4.8 million disappeared into the mist surrounding such well-known Liberals as Rémi Bujold and Claude Dauphin?

[Option Canada, April 10th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs seems surprised to be asked about Option Canada. But Option Canada came under Operation Unity, which reported to PCO, and therefore to him.

I therefore ask him the following question: if the $4.8 million did not go to the no committee, what became of it?

[Globe And Mail, April 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Jeffrey Simpson, a so-called worthy and honest journalist, today used the pages of the Globe and Mail to deliver a vitriolic attack on the members of the Bloc Quebecois and on all Quebecers who even dare to consider voting for our party.

He said, and I quote “The Bloc Quebecois caucus is mostly made up of second-raters and shouters—not caring or knowing anything about the rest of Canada—. In this, too, they are a fine reflection of their electors”.

Rarely have we seen such contempt for Quebecers and their legitimate political aspirations spread across the editorial page of a respectable Canadian newspaper. This intolerant attitude verges on hatred and racism. This is an embarrassment to the Globe and Mail and to Canada as a whole.

Off come the masks. The constitutional general store is closed. The Montreal love-in has been forgotten. Now is the hour of Bill C-20, night sticks and “shut up and stay quiet”.

Quebec is of nobler spirit. When the day comes and it becomes sovereign, it will reach out to Canada.

[Quebec Economy, April 3rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government's communication guru in Quebec and Minister of Public Works publicly announced that his government had done a good thing by introducing Bill C-20. He said “Now that we have eliminated the threat of separatism, investors want to come back to Quebec”.

That statement is rather astounding, if not downright demagogic.

The minister from Montreal should reread Saturday, February 19 issue of Le Devoir , more specifically the economy section. Under the headline “If the trend continues, Montreal will catch up with Toronto” journalist François Normand clearly explains how the gaps between Montreal and Toronto regarding unemployment, job rate and per capita income are diminishing.

Thanks to the Quebec government, led by a sovereignist party since 1994. Thanks for the positive results of its economic policies.

[Billboards, March 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport has confirmed that Mediacom billboards would be installed in the vicinity of Montreal's bridges and along some of the highways, on land belonging to the federal government.

Can the minister tell us whether the language of the signs will be governed by Quebec's Charte de la langue française or the federal Official Languages Act?

[Canadian Institutes Of Health Research Act, March 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to add a few words to my earlier remarks in order to have my Canadian Alliance colleague comment further.

The Tokamak project, it will be recalled, was, and I describe it in the past tense, a project involving a thermonuclear fusion reactor located in Varennes. Funding for this project was shared jointly by the federal government and the Government of Quebec. The federal government decided two years ago to withdraw from the project. Naturally, Quebec could not assume funding for the entire project on its own.

So this second generation reactor, which was on the leading edge of technology, will have to be sold at a loss somewhere else in the world. This is a dead loss of some $150 million.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of this dangerous precedent.

[Canadian Institutes Of Health Research Act, March 28th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am following this debate with great interest. I remember that initially the federal government was to support 50% of the costs relating to health, while each province supported the other 50%.

Today the federal government pays barely over 10%. It has reduced its involvement. If we look at its track record in a number of programs we can see a pattern where the federal government establishes programs and then withdraws from them, thus passing the buck to the provincial governments.

I have the same concern regarding the bill before us. The government is taking initiatives that will have universities and research centres buy equipment and train researchers. One day the funding these people need for their research may just stop. This means that these researchers would have to go looking for other research centres, possibly abroad.

I wonder if our colleague from the Canadian Alliance could give us his views on this.

[World Theatre Day, March 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today is World Theatre Day.

After Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda and Vaclav Havel, it is now Quebec playwright and fiction writer Michel Tremblay's turn to write the international message marking World Theatre Day.

In his text, Michel Tremblay ponders on the role of theatre in this era of globalization by saying:

For the universality of a dramatic text is not to be found in the place in which it was written, but in its humanity, in the relevance of its statements and in the beauty of its structure. Writers are not more universal because they are writing in Paris or New York rather than in Chicoutimi or Port-au-Prince.

The message written by Michel Tremblay will be read in thousands of theatres all over the world. For those who will not have the chance to be in a theatre this evening or tomorrow, the text of the declaration is available in some 20 languages on the site of the International Theatre Institute, which is under the aegis of UNESCO.

Happy World Theatre Day.