And I hope with all my heart that the great defender of this great country, none other than the Prime Minister of Canada, will join hands with the Conservative member of this House, the leader of the Conservatives, and with the Reformers too, because they all came out of the same mold. They will all try to sell flexible federalism to Quebecers.
But we will also be on the scene to push our position. We will also point out that the federal government's first reaction is always to say no to Quebec. The hon. member made comments on my speech, that is his right. But I find it strange that he did not really talk about the important points I made in my speech. Was money spent during the Oka crisis, yes or no? Did the federal government consider it a catastrophe, yes or no? Did the federal government send the army because it considered the incident to be a catastrophe as defined under the accord, yes or no? Why did the federal government spend $122 million, like the hon. member said, if it had no business in Quebec, if the incident really was a purely provincial matter?
Because Quebec asked it to? Of course. But that answers the question of whether or not it was a catastrophe. How odd that the hon. member did not talk about that. And regarding the $450 million, yes the federal government did spend $450 million on education up to 1987. I would remind the hon. member, however, that Quebec paid its share, 25 per cent or around $115 million.
The sum we are demanding is for all of the years after 1987 in which the federal government did not want to pay, under the same accord, the accord under which the federal government had already paid in years past. We are asking for nothing more than our due. The same goes for the stabilization payments.
How strange that the hon. member did not go into detail, did not explain why we were not entitled to claim these sums. No, instead, he accused us of comparing apples with oranges regarding sovereignty and would have you believe that we have charted a new course. Had he only really listened to the Bloc Quebecois since its arrival in this House, he would have realized that we did not do an "about face"; we are just openly repeating things we have always been saying here. This is merely a synthesis of our thinking.
The hon. members opposite can jeer all they want and call it an about face. For us, it is the next logical step on Quebec's path to sovereignty.