Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. parliamentary secretary must have been very discouraged when his own minister of multiculturalism acknowledged publicly that we have no Canadian heritage.
I want to talk a little about some of the things the parliamentary secretary said. He said that we should have multiculturalism so people will preserve their language and they can use that for trade. I have more faith in people than that. I think there are people who have always preserved their language so they could trade.
It is crazy to suggest that since 1971 there has been some huge jump in the amount of people who are preserving their languages so they can trade around the world. I do not have the statistics but I would love to see the statistics. I think I could convince the hon. member across the way that we did not need to spend $25 million a year for the past many years to encourage people to do that.
I think people are proud enough of their own heritage and that they will continue to preserve their own heritage at their own expense, without having some government program run by people who think they know better than individuals themselves what their lives should be like. That is crazy. It is time to give people some credit for being able to run their own lives.