Mr. Speaker, once you subtract the hyperbole, exaggeration, and the overtone of character assassination the hon. member introduced into her question, I certainly welcome it. It gives me the opportunity to clarify a misleading story that appeared.
The best way to do that is to cite the response made by the regional director general of HRD in Winnipeg, who pointed out that this project had at stake close to 1,400 jobs potentially lost to the city, involved all three levels of government, municipal, provincial, and federal, involved hundreds of representatives from the private sector, virtually all the major businesses in Winnipeg, plus tens of thousands of residents of the city, all of whom were interested in trying to preserve the jobs and the economic development. The program was simply designed to ensure that the proper diligence and feasibility was done to make sure that was a good public investment to make.
It has nothing to do with campaign contributions. The hon. member should know better than that. She should deny and retract that allegation.