Madam Speaker, I am surprised to see the knowledge that my colleague opposite has cultivated regarding the situation of francophones outside of Quebec. When I first came to Ottawa, at the same time as he did, his party thought that I was one of their own when they heard me talk.
Most of these people have never ventured outside of Quebec. Most of these separatists were oblivious to the fact that there were any francophones outside of Quebec. My riding is 40 per cent francophone. I represent such a riding, and our separatist colleagues from Quebec do not even know we exist. At the end of 1978, René Lévesque came to Laurentian University in my riding in Sudbury and said to francophones outside of Quebec that Quebec had enough problems and had no time for us. That is what he said.
My colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois are surprised and moved that there are francophones outside of Quebec. I will give them a little background on northern Ontario. There were nine children in my family, all francophones. I organize family picnics for the Lefebvre family in my riding, and we invite all of the descendants of my grandmother and grandfather. I recall one year where 750 people registered, all francophones. So, come out of your shell! Excuse me, Madam Speaker, I meant to tell them through you to come out of the shell in which they have been hiding.
It is never adviseable to propose to separate from something you do not know. Go see the rest of Canada. Go see whether it exists, get a taste of it and you will conclude that it is worth keeping Canada together. Yes, if I rise in this House today and am so proud to speak to you in my mother tongue, French, it is because I had the opportunity to live it, to be raised in it and to speak it at university. My son is registered in a family medicine program in French in northern Ontario and my wife teaches at a French school.
Before being elected, I taught French in a French college; the new college is under construction. I was the president of a French-English school board, the majority of whose members were francophones. So do not try to tell me that francophones outside Quebec have no rights and that our rights are being taken away from us daily. We had our problems in the past, but we got to know one another instead of deciding to separate. We decided to sit down together and learn to work with one another.
I played hockey with the anglophones and I enjoyed it. They are good people. I also played in another league where everyone was French and we spoke French on the ice and in the locker rooms. We learned to work at overcoming problems, to respect one another. The respect of one person for another is very important for a federation.
The message is not complicated. For the separatists, if you wish to separate, at least know what you are separating from, because you run a very great risk of hurting the people you represent. This is not right, because the members of the Bloc Quebecois in this House do not represent the majority of Quebecers. They are playing a dangerous game and those of us from northern Ontario know it.
With reference to Radio-Canada, I am going to tell you about one of the problems we have in northern Ontario, because I think something needs to be said. Most of our programming comes from the province of Quebec, but we would like more local programming. The propaganda we get on the television and the radio is driving us to switch to our other francophone stations in northern Ontario.