Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for making a few points I may have omitted, but I would like to point out that my remarks apply to the new Bill C-46, through which the Department of Industry will take over, so to speak, the Federal Office of Regional Development. I said in my little speech that I would have liked the bill to contain clauses underscoring the advantages of letting each province, Ontario and Quebec in particular in this case, choose where and how to invest federal government funds.
It is true that in the past, the work done by the Federal Office of Regional Development was highly regarded in various regions including mine, but when the hon. member indicates that the forestry people were very happy with the federal government's role in reforestation efforts, I would like to say that my region benefited very little from this project.
We hear that, with the upcoming cutbacks, the Federal Office will not inject any more money into private industries. The new policies do not provide any money for the tourism industry for one thing. I wonder how the amounts will be set to help a region like mine when it needs money precisely for forestry, while forest resources are already scarce. If we do not have enough money for tourist facilities-and we are told this is not a
government priority- how can we help my region-and not the Lac-Saint-Jean region where they may not need as much money for tourism because they already have good facilities? How can we be address specific needs when the government sets priorities for us?
The federal government's goal is to help the regions but this approach, instead of showing good will, simply hampers development. I do not know whether I should say something else on this subject for the hon. member's benefit, but I think that if this bill had let the provinces and especially the regions choose how to achieve their own development, I think we would have been much more likely to support this bill. However, given the bill's current wording, because it does not say anything about the need to adapt to specific regional needs, as Mr. Lesage used to say, I think that we cannot support it.