Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the NDP caucus, I join with others in the House of Commons in expressing condolences to the family of Jean-Luc Pepin and say a few words about him by way of recollection on the basis of my own experience in this House between 1979 and 1984.
One should be honest and say that what I remember of Jean-Luc Pepin is fighting him on all fronts with respect to the Crow rate and VIA Rail cuts. He had the misfortune, I would suggest, of being assigned these tasks by the then Liberal government.
I suspected at the time that he was not always completely happy in the role he was assigned, especially when it came to the VIA Rail cuts, because I know that his father worked for CN and he had a railway background. He sometimes looked a bit uncomfortable, but he handled everything. He handled those issues as he handled everything, with a great deal of grace, a great deal of generosity, a great deal of humour, and with a kind of philosophical touch that one does not see all that often here in the House of Commons.
The thing I remember most about him was the sort of intellectual delight he took in argumentation and debate. He was one of the few members of Parliament I can remember who sprinkled his debates on the Crow rate and other more seemingly practical issues with
quotations or allusions to Sarte and Camus and Nietzche and various other philosophers whose works he was obviously familiar with.
I remember him as a great parliamentarian, a great Canadian, someone committed, as so many have said, to Canadian unity. It is unfortunate that at this very critical time in our history we will not have the voice of Jean-Luc Pepin being able to contribute to the debate that is upon us about Canada's future.