Madam Speaker, in Bill C-17, it is mentioned that the government can authorize a borrowing of $25 million. I wonder about that. Where will this money be spent? Will it be in large centres or rather in fringe areas?
Madam Speaker, you know that in my region, in Matane, Rimouski and Sept-Iles, we have been terribly penalized. It is a sparsely populated rural area. When constituents are few, it seems that they can take everything away from you. It hurts us in the rural areas.
How many of these millions will be used to restore television service in Rimouski, Matane and Sept-Iles? In our modern world, communications are extremely important. In my region, in small isolated parishes with nothing for 8, 10 or 15 kilometres around, people are beginning to speak out.
Last Saturday, I attended a meeting of Urgence rurale in Saint-Marcellin, a small community of 300 inhabitants. For once, the people spoke for themselves instead of inviting Ph.Ds from the university. They were asked: "What do you want in your region?" They had stunning things to say. For the last 15 or 20 years, these people have taken things into their own hands and almost made miracles with very modest, very minimal means. Their parish was supposed to be closed, but they reacted. They asked me why they no longer had services from Radio-Canada in Matane, Rimouski and Sept-Iles. They told me they had invited reporters to a meeting of Urgence rurale, but the CBC never bothered to cover their story. They were too small. Small parishes are not important for the CBC.
Then, I asked myself: "Where are these 25 million going to go?" If none of it comes to our area there will be a serious problem. You must realize that there might be some political game involved. Duplessis used to say: "The less people know, the more they will vote for me". He had another saying: "In Quebec, we have the best education system in the world". Of course, it was not true then.
Is our communication system threatened? If we cannot communicate with each other we will stay ignorant, and ignorance is the saddest and the most rotten thing in the world.
We demand to be provided with CBC services. Today we do not have such services. We can still communicate of course, but we do it differently, we have to go through the telephone. This is a rather crude way, when television could really unite us.
Our region includes the Magdalen Islands, Sept-Îles, Matane, Rimouski, and we cannot communicate with one another. As long as we are unable to talk to each other, the governments will be satisfied. Because we are isolated, we are almost islanders and this give us a tremendous dynamism, although we cannot export it to the right places.
As I was saying, the area of the Lower St. Lawrence, the area of Gaspe, the islands, the North shore, no longer has access to its own means of communication and this is painful.
In order for people to develop a sense of self-worth and to understand one another and in order to raise their collective consciousness, communication is essential and the Radio-Canada television network is an excellent communication vehicle. If the government does not want to give money to Radio-Canada, then it should give it instead to Radio-Québec or to community television stations, because this money comes from the taxes Quebecers pay. It is their money to begin with. We could use this money to readily defend ourselves with dignity.
Three stations were shut down and a decision was made to broadcast from the Quebec City station. I have nothing against this station. Quebec City reporters are undoubtedly very competent, but what do they know about our region? Do they know that there is no university in my riding? Do they know that there is only one CEGEP? What do they know about eastern Quebec or about the federal-provincial agreement? Absolutely nothing. Are Quebec City reporters familiar with the unemployment rate in the area ridings? Absolutely not. They deliver the evening news and they do a good job of it, but they know nothing at all about our region. Even if they want to be as objective as possible, quite often they are ignorant of local events and do not give a totally fair account of the facts.
The ties that bind us together are being severed. In today's global village, we receive news from around the world. We receive an immediate account of events taking place in all countries abroad, whereas we have to wait two, three or four days, and sometimes even one week, before learning about the goings-on in our own backyard.
Would you not agree that this is insulting and frustrating? The $25 million to be spent should be spent in the regions. I firmly believe this and I hope that my colleagues opposite understand the problems faced by rural communities. I hope that they will come to our defence because we too pay for a great many things in Canada through our taxes. However, we do not get our kick at the can as often as we should.