Mr. Speaker, I did mention in my speech that this is not covered by the Constitution. The involvement of the federal government in regional development is only due to its spending power and is not enshrined in the Constitution.
The regional development initiatives taken by the Quebec government in the last 10 years have resulted in more co-operation between all the major economic, social, health and education stakeholders and a learning process during socio-economic summits, followed by consultations, which ensure that the reform introduced by Liberal minister Picotte, in Quebec, really led to some money transfers to the regions.
The current situation is best described as follows: the regions can decide and have real budgets. What we want now is to go beyond tax transfers and have the power to levy taxes through regional county municipalities. That would give us a real tax base and enable us to make real decisions and solve regional problems which would have been analyzed at once by people in the regions. So, as you see, tax points are important.