Mr. Speaker, I too would like to express my congratulations to the member on his address.
I was particularly interested to hear his references to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They were of particular interest to me because I had a grant from the council that I had to give up when I joined this Chamber. I was the first person to do so since the member for Winnipeg South Centre gave his up in 1974. Also the remarks about Madam Leduc were appropriate. She has been an excellent leader of that organization.
In addition to the possibility of support from the SSHRC in the province of Quebec there is the possibility of support from the provincial government which I did not have in the province of Ontario. In other words, social scientists in Quebec have more substantial opportunities for funding for their social science research than do social scientists in Ontario.
Second, having served on juries for the SSHRC, I recall that the province of Quebec received a proportion that was higher than the portion of its university population. In terms of the member's larger remarks about sovereignty, in considering these questions he should recognize that over the past 25 or 30 years these councils have developed social science research. The province of Quebec has had an extraordinary amount of research supported by the SSHRC and the federal government. Social science research in the province of Quebec has benefited admirably by this contribution. In a sovereign Quebec it would be lost.