Mr. Speaker, I join many of my colleagues on this side of the House in supporting the establishment of a Department of Industry and I hope that this support will be unanimous. This new department will give Canada and Canadians the new tools they need to help them create jobs and build a more secure future.
However, before we go any further, I think that we have to take into consideration the history of our country. We can always think of the first settlers who were supported by the church or by people who were put there to help them develop an area-in my case it was the Gaspé Peninsula-and that is how Quebec and Canada were built.
There is always some degree of co-operation between the various elements of our society in any area, whether it be industry, education or, of course, the public service. But since then, since the 17th and 18th centuries, there was Confederation in 1867 and the National Policy was established under Sir John A. Macdonald. It was a very ambitious plan. It all started with the construction of the railway better known today as CN and VIA Rail. This great project to link our country from east to west did not go unnoticed in other parts of the world.
It was undertaken to give some impetus to the Canadian economy, but it could not have been done without the support of governments, without money being spent on the construction of this trans-Canada railway. Indeed, if we look at the debates held in 1867 in this House, we will see that there have always been critics of this avant-garde vision of the federal government at that time. But by developing the railway, that government believed that it was giving itself the means to develop this country. The resources were developed afterwards; then, thanks to the railway, Western Canada was populated, as well as Ontario and part of Quebec. Links were made between these new provinces, and this marked the beginning of the Canadian federation.
This is a primary example of a massive intervention by the federal government, but in consultation and co-operation with business interests and also with provincial governments.
Then came the first world war. Once again we found some unanimity, a will to fight for our rights, for our country, but still in a spirit of generalized co-operation. The same thing happened at the time of the Second World War when, over a period of five or six years, our industry, with government support, went from a third-rate position to making Canada the third or fourth greatest economic power of the time.
As you know, before 1945, before the war, over 45 per cent of the Canadian population was rural. After the war years, Canada became an industrial power. We went through an urbanization phase with people leaving rural areas to settle in the city. After the war and initiatives like the Victory Loan Bonds to raise money, the government took the same approach. After six years of substantial interest rates, Canadians were able to invest in their country's own economy because they had faith in it. They bought into Canada.
In 1945, 1946, and 1947, we were in a position to implement a demilitarization policy to foster an economy based on consumer spending. We became a consumer society, but that did not happen without the help, involvement and commitment of the federal government.
My colleague opposite mentioned C. D. Howe, who master-minded Canadian industrial development in those years, and Walter Gordon. They were men of vision who laid the foundation of the Canadian society as we know it. Those developments should be seen in their historical context so we can better
explain the goal of the present government in revitalizing the Canadian industry as we enter the next century.
The 1950s came. You know that those years are often called the dark ages in Quebec. The province was ruled by the Union nationale, under Duplessis. Quebec was undergoing changes, but changes similar to those outside Canada.
We then had the Quiet Revolution which, obviously, met many Quebecers' aspirations. We should never forget that the Quiet Revolution took place under a Liberal government, within the Canadian context and the Canadian federation. We were able to show Quebecers that federalism is a flexible and generous system which fulfils the deep-rooted aspirations of all Canadians.
During the 1960s, new schools were built. University education was popularized and made accessible to all Quebecers. Of course, we must not forget that education-as is the case today-was financed in large part by the federal government. Never did the federal government dare intervene in this quiet revolution, never did the federal government dare hinder the material progress, the economic progress of all Quebecers. This fact must be recognized.
In the late 1960s, more specifically in 1966, the people elected another Union Nationale government which claimed that the premier of the day, Jean Lesage, went too fast for Quebec. We must not forget either that Jean Lesage served as a minister in the federal government in the 1950s. Surely, he must have borrowed some ideas and solutions from his colleagues from Ontario and the Maritimes. I believe we must recognize-and I think that many researchers and specialists interested in Jean Lesage do recognize-that Jean Lesage's tenure in Ottawa served him well in developing Quebec as we know it today.
That being said, more progress was made in the 1970s. In those days, we believed more and more in the welfare state. It is not a concept exclusive to Quebec or Canada, but a concept also known in Germany, Scandinavia, France and even England. The purpose of the welfare state is to make sure that everybody's interests, not only the interests of financiers, or people from Montreal and Quebec City, are taken into account.
