Mr. Speaker, while he cries over Montreal's fate, what the Prime Minister wants in fact is to deprive Montreal of a financial and economic decision making centre. There was the S-31 attempt to rein in the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec. The Prime Minister must remember, as he was a minister at the time and took part in the decision to crush the Caisse de dépôt et de placement. More recently, there was Montreal's proposed international banking centre, which was also torpedoed by the federal government. The government now wants to create a Canada-wide securities commission in Toronto rather than Montreal.
How can the Prime Minister reconcile yesterday's fine promises to help Montreal with his plan to create a securities commission in Toronto, when we know full well that this would further weaken Montreal?