Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Abitibi for his excellent question. I believe there is only one possible answer to that question. For this government, like the previous one, it is not a priority to serve the population of Quebec and Canadians well. Its main interest is not there, as was revealed yesterday by the Liberals' position on public financing. The citizens of Quebec and those of Canada are not the ones who finance those two old political parties. It is rather the large companies, the very rich Canadian minority, and the ones who are served first when an old federalist party comes into office. That is crystal clear.
The logical result of public fund raising is that the first ones to be served when a member, a government comes into office are the citizens. Not friends who contribute several hundred thousand dollars to the party's campaign fund but real citizens with genuine needs. Members of parties who have adopted such a public fund raising serve first of all those electors.
If at the outset you have a predisposition to grease the palms of the very rich and mighty friends of the party, you are less disposed to think first in terms of equal services from coast to coast in Canada or, in the case of Quebec, in the regions as opposed to the big centres. You are also less disposed to think that way, you would rather choose to give $30 million to the party's friends who may have lost something. We do not know if they have lost or not because there was no inquiry. We are not saying that they are not entitled to compensation, but that we do not know what really happened, since there was no public inquiry into this matter.
Thus, you decide to compensate the Liberal hacks, to maintain the family trusts in which these same hacks invested and still invest year after year without paying a single cent in tax for up to 80 years. You also decide to maintain tax treaties with 16 tax havens around the world, again allowing the wealthiest, the very large and profitable Canadian corporations to file their profits overseas where these are free of tax and to report in Canada their losses made overseas, for example. These are the choices you make.
You also choose to cut billions from the unemployment insurance fund, simply because the unemployed are not those who contribute to the Liberal war chest. Grassroot financing is not enough. The Liberal Party turns to the large corporations, their great and rich friends, for financial support. Kolber, Bronfman and friends, these are the ones who hand out the money because they will be served later by the Liberal Party as well as by the Conservative Party. Thus, to me, Liberals and Conservatives are the same: old parties which are against democracy. They are old parties which are against grassroot financing as they obviously showed us yesterday.
Anyway, I am not surprised by the fact that such absurd decisions as the one to close regional airports which serve a specific population are being taken, while, in the case of Pearson Airport, they refuse any kind of inquiry or openness because they are afraid of the truth.