Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks, but I feel compelled to remind him of certain facts. I do not want to give him a history lesson, but I think that there is no relationship whatsoever between the events in Restigouche and the matter we are discussing today. I am sure that, if my colleague takes the time to consult his history book, he will recognize that these two matters are not related.
However, I agree with him when he talks about the need to deal with the real problems facing native populations. I wish the member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine would convince his colleagues to adopt a similar position because, in recent years, it is exactly what every Quebec government, whether federalist or sovereignist, has done in relation to the James Bay agreement, especially in relation to the matter we are debating, that is the $119 million claim for the education of young natives in northern Quebec.
The government of Quebec has striven to offer quality services to native people and to meet their needs, which means that when there is an increase in the clientele, there must be an increase in spending on health care or education, as is the case here. That is what the government of Quebec has done over the past ten years, and it is the federal government which has been tight fisted with its money. If the government of Quebec had waited for the federal government to honour its commitments, natives in the north would never have had the level of services they are getting today, thanks to the Quebec government.
So the point raised by my colleague for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine is most interesting. I ask him to convince the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and the Minister of Finance to contact the Quebec Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs immediately to settle the issue. We agree on this. Quality services have been delivered and now the time has come to pay the bill. Unfortunately, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs will do the same thing he did in the case of the Charlottetown referendum in 1992: he will first lose face, then he will change his mind and agree that he must reimburse the government of Quebec.