Maybe. The parliamentary secretary thinks Atlantic Canada is heaven on earth; maybe for her it is, but for the thousands of unemployed, for example those who have to move, it is certainly not a paradise. There is considerable work to be done and we think people can do better locally than whatever the civil servants could do here in Ottawa.
We also think that Fisheries and Oceans officials would be better off in Newfoundland than in Ottawa. Of course the federal government always thinks it can do better.
There is another very important point the parliamentary secretary forgot in her speech and it concerns the regional economy of the Atlantic region and Montreal. What is the government planning to do for the conversion? It certainly has a role to play in this issue since it was the one to give out the contracts. We all know that defence programs will decrease in importance because the government is getting out. Therefore, we must make sure that conversion programs from military to civilian use are implemented. We have been fighting for weeks here in the House for such measures. There even was an opposition day on that issue. The military economy is still important today; companies producing military equipment are very important in the Atlantic region. But the speech says nothing about that.
They refer to successful projects, projects that produced good results during the Tory mandate and they say: "Look at these achievements; that is what the Liberals want to do". Meanwhile, they continue to forget the true role of the federal government in the conversion of military industries into civilian ones. That is the government's responsibility; the American government accomplished that very well by the way.
So if we want regional development in the Atlantic region, we must let the local people decide for themselves. We must stop spending billions of our taxpayers' money on stupid projects like Hibernia and we must immediately implement a conversion program for military industries.