Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. I will try to answer his questions as best as I can.
In so far as this Parliament examining the kinds of issues that he raised and wants examined, of course we are in favour of that. The committees will be up and running in the next few days and they are going to be working very hard.
The Prime Minister has already pointed out when it comes to tax matters, especially the GST, the finance committee will be given instructions to do a very thorough job. The finance committee will also be taking into consideration not only the budget that will be brought down next month but future budgets as well.
I say very sincerely to the hon. member from the Bloc that there will be plenty of opportunity at the committee level to discuss all the issues that weigh so heavily on his mind.
Let me respond for a moment to his remarks about his leader not being a man who wants to take Quebec out of Canada. As far as I know, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois calls himself a sovereignist.
My definition of sovereignty is a country that is sovereign, separate from another country. It seems to me when a party leader says he wants to establish a country that is sovereign, that is a country which is separate and apart from Canada. As far as I know the province of Quebec, which is a terrific province and one that is as good as any other province in this country, is still not a separate country.
Let us not try to treat this as some kind of semantic argument. This is a political problem and a political issue. No fancy dancing with semantics will change it. What we are talking about here is a faction in this House that wants to break up the country.
If the Péquistes in Quebec win the next provincial election and if, God forbid, they win the referendum as they promise to do, does anyone think that these ladies and gentlemen who call themselves the Bloc will be sitting around here representing the best interests of Canada? Not on your life.
Let us put a stop to this talk about semantics. One more thing. The hon. member tries to misquote the Prime Minister when he said that the Prime Minister was indicating that we were going to solve all our economic problems and revamp our social programs in the coming year. Nobody ever said that.
When it comes to government and politics, a year is a very short period of time. In fact, one never completely solves all economic problems and one never completely solves all social problems. This is an ongoing thing.
We have promised to tackle these problems head on. We are going to make some changes. We are going to create jobs. We are going to turn this economy around, but it will not be overnight and it will not happen in one year.