Yes, the military college was another fine mess. The Liberal government is forced to admit they have neither the desire nor the money to maintain the only francophone military training institution in America.
In tomorrow's Canada, in order to receive military training, francophones will have to go to a most anglophone city-which is all right-that has no facilities to make them feel welcome. The government say they have no choice. They have neither the desire nor the money to go on. That gives an idea of the Canada in which Quebecers will have to live, if they decide to remain a part of it.
What can we say about social program reform besides saying that again the government is in a jam? When one is obviously and deliberately taking it out not on unemployment but on the unemployed, not on poverty but on the poor, when the only thing we know about the government is that they will consult for two years-only to cut $7.5 billion in social programs at the end of the consultations, the situation is serious! When it is the unemployed and not unemployment, and the poor as opposed to poverty that are attacked, I say we are in a jam!
As for manpower training, the federal government stubbornly wants to keep jurisdiction over it. However, everybody in Quebec, employers as well as union leaders, school board members, Department of Education or Quebec government officials, whether federalist or not, everybody agrees that vocational training should be entirely under Quebec jurisdiction. But no, the government, for reasons known only to itself, is stubbornly hanging on to manpower training, after a two-year study involving goodness knows who, whereas everyone in Quebec is saying that it should withdraw from this area.
The last issue has to do not only with the government opposite, but with the federal system as well. I will not hide the fact that for sovereigntists like myself, it is very good news indeed to know what the rules of the game are in this country. The Supreme Court has just given us some idea of what they are with its ruling on telephony and communications where it said that however distinct Quebec might be, it had no rights over this field.