--in this particular area.
You can't cut it both ways. Either this takes away from a national housing strategy--and if it does, the other provinces should have the same privileges--or, if it doesn't, why is it there? There's no reason to have it.
We know that all of the provinces have been given funds by the federal government. In fact, there's been $2 billion to repair and build new social housing; $1 billion for repairs and upgrades; $400 million for seniors; $75 million for persons with disabilities, first nations, and areas in the north. And that money is given to the provinces, essentially, according to an established formula.
If you're going to have an existing strategy that gives those kinds of dollars, and you really want it to be meaningful, are you saying that Quebec may or may not participate, depending on its own choices, its own programs, and its own approach relating to housing on its territory? If it has that kind of a choice, then what about Saskatchewan, what about Manitoba, what about Ontario? Do you suppose they might want to administer the national strategy by way of their own choices, by way of their own programs, by way of their own approaches, with respect to housing on their property? Of course they would. It's provincial jurisdiction. It's no different whether you're in Quebec or any other province of Canada.
What is behind this amendment is a desire to get Bloc support, notwithstanding anything else, and an attempt to circumvent the ruling of the Speaker in an indirect way. I think that's offensive. What we have here is essentially the tyranny of the minority, of the opposition trying to get together to put something together that ought not to be. No one's yet answered the question of why the other provinces aren't in on it and what it means if Quebec has some special status as a result of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
I'd like to have somebody explain that to me, if they could.