I thank the hon. member for his speech. He made it clear that the notion of accountability was central to the problem. Every time the federal government gets involved, this government, which initially was intended to co-ordinate and equalize, steps directly into provincial areas of jurisdiction.
When looking at the agreement with Ontario released this morning, I find it as vague as the others in this regard. It states that the federal-provincial management committee, made up of two members from the federal side and two members from the provincial side, will set up unspecified subcommittees, and that it will be responsible for establishing subcommittees as required in order to manage the agreement; for delegating to these subcommittees every power required to carry out their mandate and for setting every procedure applicable to these meetings and to all the subcommittees, in particular the rules of conduct of meetings and of decision-making.
Once more, accountability will be an excuse for interfering. Municipalities will be faced with expenditures that will alter their three-year plans and as a result the problem will not be
addressed because this program is supposed to deal with basic infrastructure problems.
Initially, that was the program proposed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Today, Ontario is even accepting school boards as local administrations. This means school boards as well as municipalities will be eligible.
The first project in the program, the convention centre in Quebec City, is not a renovation project or basic infrastructure or even locally-based infrastructure. How much will there be left of the $6 billion for the FCM's project? There will not be enough left. They said $20 billion was needed. In 1985, it was $12 billion, and now this has been revised upward to $20 billion.
Where is the critical mass of this program? In its agreement, the government never gives carte blanche for any kind of project, and I am sure the President of the Treasury Board is going to be very happy because for the first time in perhaps 20 years, he will not be just a budget cutter. He will also be able to dole out subsidies, but these agreements contain no restrictions on what the federal government can do. Just read the agreements. If you look at them from the provincial point of view, you will see they contain everything the federal government needs to get involved in all stages of the project.
The hon. member also mentioned the Bloc's position as the Official Opposition. Yes, we are. I spent most of my speech talking about the infrastructure project because I take that position very seriously.
We will get back to this if necessary, but as far as I am concerned, when Quebec's interests are at stake, and I mentioned the mandate we sought and received from the people of Quebec, when our interests do not coincide with those of other Canadian provinces which may prefer to let the federal government interfere with certain jurisdictions, we will consider Quebec's right to object to this kind of interference and will always defend the interests of Quebec.