Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have an opportunity to participate in the debate today because I believe that this debate is really about who speaks for Canada.
I do not believe that we will ever resolve the debate with the Bloc Quebecois because it does not believe in Canada. It is separatist. It will not recognize any federal presence, Government of Canada presence, in the province of Quebec. As long as it has that position of trying to destroy Canada then this debate is not going to go very far.
The fact of the matter is that we are a national government here in Ottawa but we are supervising one of the most decentralized national governments in the world. Many members of Parliament today gave very specific examples.
We have a decentralized instrument in Atlantic Canada called the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency which is a Government of Canada instrument on the ground working with the
provinces and the municipalities. That unit is very sensitive to the diverse needs of Atlantic Canada.
As we become more and more dependent on the new economy and the new technologies, the Government of Canada presence is there to support those new emerging small and medium sized businesses. That instrument is in place.
In western Canada we have the western Canada diversification fund which is also a decentralized Government of Canada instrument working on the ground in every province in western Canada trying to be ultra sensitive to the needs of not just the region but of every province in the western region.
In the province of Ontario we have FedNor, an instrument in northern Ontario which is very sensitive because we are talking about industries which have very difficult times because of shipping distances and because we are going through a conversion in the north. We are moving into new industries there because our resource based industries can no longer sustain us. However, the Government of Canada has a presence there. The federal Government of Canada works with FedNor and with the municipalities and the province of Ontario trying to be sensitive to the needs of northern Ontario.
In the province of Quebec we have the Federal Office for Regional Development called FORD-Q. There are hundreds of examples of where FORD-Q is working in a decentralized way in every region of the province of Quebec, trying to make sure that the very issues of concern that the Bloc Quebecois is talking about today are addressed.
The problem is that the Bloc Quebecois refuses to tell its constituents that there is a Government of Canada presence working on the ground in its region, getting policy direction from the national government in Ottawa, on the ground operating in Quebec in a very decentralized way. The fact of the matter is the Bloc members will not recognize these decentralized instruments because they are not interested in building Canada. They are interested in destroying Canada.
The thing that is beginning to really bother me about the Bloc Quebecois members is they now know that their separatist thrust is destabilizing the economy of the country. As they destabilize the economy of the country they are putting pressure on our interest rates. That cost to the national treasury is a heck of a lot more than some of the duplication examples that they gave here today.
I would be the first person to admit that our system is not perfect. There are examples, not just in Quebec but in every region of this country, in which we can show that there might have been some waste here or that there might have been a duplication there. That is no excuse for giving up on Canada. That is no excuse for saying I want to separate from Canada. If they really believe in putting people back to work in their constituencies the same way that we in every other region of the country want to put our people back to work, then they would stop this notre chez nous.
Let us get real. We are dealing with the lives of millions of people here. We are no longer dealing simply with the lives of the people in the province of Quebec. We are dealing with the lives and the jobs of people from coast to coast in this country. This separatist let us kill Canada approach is really not in the best interests.
They laugh. This is a member of Parliament who served for 10 years in the Mulroney government, an ex-Mulroneyite sitting now with the Bloc. Their leader, another ex-Mulroneyite, is an incredible example.