Madam Speaker, can the hon. member seriously tell us that in her riding, increasing the required number of weeks worked before one is entitled to unemployment-insurance benefits will not increase poverty? Let us not be mistaken here; the unemployed will be entitled to fewer weeks of benefits.
As for the issue of women, it is perverse for a member from Quebec to say such a thing; she should know better from her own experience in Quebec where the Bourbeau reform was implemented a few years ago and where women have to find witnesses and leave their homes in the evening just to prove they live alone. That kind of situation is unacceptable. We cannot maintain such a thing.
With regard to the member's question and comment, I for one trust Canadian and Quebec medias. I do not feel they lie, I think they report truthfully what they hear in the House of Commons. This is also partly what Mr. Martin, the Minister of Finance, realized the day after he presented his budget. He discovered that everyone thought he had made no changes at all and that surprised him a great deal.
My last comment is on the issue of what you call the separatists, or at least those who want Quebec to be sovereign. A sovereign country is one which makes its own legislation, collects its own taxes and signs all its treaties. We believe there is 3 billion dollars worth of duplication in a federal system and that means unnecessary expenditures; and because of your ideology, government members refuse to address that question. If they had the courage to do so, they would not have to take money away from the less fortunate among us.