Madam Speaker, I would like to say to the hon. member-if he has children he will understand-that we have a situation where a group of people or a region is a like a child that grows up. When Quebec entered Confederation, it was looking for some form of security, and it helped to found the Canadian Confederation.
As the years went by, it realized it had no control over the way the house in which it lived was run and that, once past adolescence, it was not treated as an adult. But at some point, you have to go from adolescence to adulthood.
Equalization gave Quebec a chance to survive at least for a couple years? We never said it did not. What we are saying is that the system undermines Quebec's desire to be autonomous.
The equalization system treats us like children who have to be told what to do.
Quebec will no longer stand for being treated like this by societies other than its own.
We have taken charge of our economic development, especially since the sixties when we created instruments like the Caisse de dépôt et de placement, which we had to wrench from the federal government. Otherwise we would have no control over this area today. We nationalized electricity at the expense of outside authorities as well. Little by little, we reached the conclusion that we had to get out of this system.
I think that Quebecers, especially since 1968, have tried a lot of things: we tried a federal Liberal government, with 74 Liberal members, and we did not get what we wanted. We tried "le beau risque" with the Tories, and we did not get what we wanted. Now the people of Quebec have decided to clarify the situation with Canada, and that is our role here, as representatives of the Bloc Quebecois, elected by 50 per cent of the population of Quebec.