I thank the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. Yes, CLSC.
There is something similar in my own riding, the North End Community clinic in Halifax. A particular form of community based medicine can save us a lot of money. This is clearly the way we are going to have to go and not to what I call band-aid, short sighted remedies like user pay.
This government and the red book that is the basis of this government's policy in this Parliament has a commitment to the people of Canada in the creation of jobs, in the creation of dignity, and in the absolute commitment to the fact that all Canadians are equal in the area of opportunity.
You are not somehow a second class citizen because you live in one part of the country as opposed to another part, or a second class citizen because your family tradition is to go down to the sea and fish rather than get a university degree, or rather than go to the farm and plough, or whatever. Canadians have an equality of opportunity and a right to have those opportunities and the services of their government from sea to sea to sea.
It is not something you will be more entitled to if you live in an urban riding. It is not something you will be more entitled to if you live in Ontario. It is not something you will be less entitled to if you live in the Northwest Territories.
It certainly is not something you will be less entitled to if you happen to be franco-Canadian-if I can say that, French Canadian-or if you happen to be a member of an ethnocultural group that did not necessarily get here 400 years ago.
The point is that we in this government are committed totally to the marriage of compassion and responsibility. As well, the point is that in spite of the meanderings I hear from time to time from our learned colleagues on the other side-