Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues have pointed out, the current economic situation in Quebec and Canada is far from encouraging. The unemployment rate exceeds 11 per cent and the federal deficit is growing steadily. These figures reflect an increasingly unacceptable reality: poverty has got its claws into the middle class now and there is no doubt that action is urgently needed.
In a context of scarse financial resources however, government action must be carefully targeted to achieve maximum effect.
As my colleagues said, the federal deficit results both from a structural problem and a-
Mr. Speaker, could you ask the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands to go and sleep it off somewhere else. For a member-