Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the comments of the hon. member for Longueuil whose example of Statistics Canada illustrated the situation well. A little over a year ago, I did some work, a study on research and development expenditures. As it were, almost all the money spent within the federal government, the intramuros expenditures as we call them were made here, in Ottawa and the National Capital region. So, by force of circumstance, most of the R and D investments are made in this region.
In some cases, the determining factor is the fact that the National Research Council is located here, but that does not explain everything and even then, the rest of the R and D funds should be distributed more equitably. That is why, as the hon. member said, we must look at the causes and the root of problems if we want to have a clear understanding.
I would like to mention a point that is coming back to me regarding the definition of the standards mentioned earlier. We would not be too happy in some ways-and I do not know what the hon. member for St. Boniface thinks of this-if we were to have common standards and that standards set by the Americans would apply to Quebec and Canada. It would not always be
pleasant to have models that are far from our reality, especially in the area of health, where we have a completely different system here, although the Americans are starting to lean in our direction now.
In that regard we must be careful. This does not mean that we cannot agree eventually to standards in very specific areas like the environment, as I pointed out earlier. But for the rest, we must be very careful with regard to standards and that is why we have this plan.