Mr. Speaker, in his question and comments the hon. member requires that I repeat a couple of the things I said in my speech. If he wants to stand in this House and say through the television cameras to the people of Quebec and to the people of Montreal that the political climate and the political instability brought to that province through of the pursuit of the sovereignty option has absolutely no impact on the economy of Quebec, then he can say that. There is not an economist, not a reasonable person in Quebec or anywhere else in Canada or the world that believes that.
If the hon. member is going to suggest to me that the political climate in Quebec is conducive to economic activity, he is just plain wrong because it is not. In order to have an economy grow, move forward and create jobs it needs to have political stability.
The member forgets something else. Economies operate within a market system. They are not dictated simply by what the provincial government in Quebec City does. They are not simply affected by what a federal government might do in Ottawa. They are dictated in this country in large part by the markets within which we operate. Those markets are affected by external factors.
One of those factors is the political stability within which that market operates. Until that political stability is brought into line, until that sovereignty option is put aside and the concentration is on the economy in Quebec there will continue to be economic problems in that part of this country.