Mr. Speaker, the Parti Quebecois claims it will save $3 billion in an independent Quebec through the elimination of the overlap and duplication of the federal system.
How does Premier Parizeau expect to achieve this objective when he is promising to hire the thousands of federal public servants living in Quebec? Premier Parizeau said in August of this year that an independent Quebec could not hire all the federal public servants working for the departments of agriculture and of the environment, for example, because Quebec's departments in these areas are already fully staffed.
The so-called promise the Government of Quebec is making to hire federal public servants living in Quebec reminds me of the generous collective agreements the Parti Quebecois accorded Quebec public servants prior to the 1980 referendum. Following the rejection of the referendum question, the Parti Quebecois government then cut provincial public servants' salaries by some 20 per cent. Federal public servants have therefore every reason to mistrust the Parti Quebecois promises.