Mr. Speaker, I can see after what the hon. member stated that he would not wish to extend the period to rebut the statements he made. He only wishes to extend it to rebut the statements of others.
The hon. member opposite said that the Bloc Quebecois does not check into the reality of how Canada works. I would suggest that the government has not checked into the reality of why the country is not working.
If you have a dog named Rory and the dog makes a mess of your house, you say you do not want this dog and you kick it out. A little while later you bring a dog in, a dog named Brick. Why should you be surprised if the dog makes the same mess of your house if it is the same dog with a different name?
There is a lot of selection going on here today. The hon. member talked about the selective memory of the Bloc. I would suggest that the hon. member is using selective statistics in backing his own arguments. He talks about the 40,000 or 50,000 jobs created in the west through government grants and government funding. How many jobs have we lost in the west because of the government's overspending and the taxation of all the different businesses and individuals which rob us of the ability to do this for ourselves?
The government creates the problem. It gave us a small bit of a solution to that problem. Then it wants to pat itself on the back for it.
There is something wrong with a system in which we give our money to the federal government and then have to beg and plead to get some of it back through whatever program it decides to develop. It is very selective how it is given out.
The hon. minister talked about 150 companies that get the government's benevolent help. What about the companies that are not in that group, further disadvantaged because now we have government interference stepping in and saying: "You are the good companies so we are going to help you; but we are not helping you guys with your taxes because we have to get the money from somewhere to give to these other companies in the first place".
When he said we want to bring together the wealth of Canada, they have sure done that; they have taken all the wealth of Canada and brought it here to Ottawa and then squandered it.
What we have to do is find some solutions to problems. We are getting rhetoric from that side, we are getting rhetoric from every side, and I am probably using a bit of it because I get caught up in the flow.
In terms of regional development, the problem with government today and in the past is that it is selective. It makes these arbitrary choices of who it is going to help and how it is going to help. The Bloc Quebecois is upset about the money it pays out and gets back. The west pays out more than it gets back and we are tired of that as well.
I would suggest to the hon. member that if he is going to use statistics, use accurate ones, use ones that reflect the true picture and not his own stilted sort of version of it.