Mr. Speaker, I am certain the hon. member did not mean to say that Montreal was the capital city of Quebec; I think he meant Quebec City.
One thing I want to point out to the hon. member is that it was the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who pointed out that Montreal is not the city it used to be.
The hon. member has to acknowledge that over the last 25 years Liberal governments have been in power in this country, with the exception of the horrendous Tory government. It did almost as much damage as the Liberal governments have done over the many years they have been around.
The member talked about cuts in services and cuts to staffing in the revenue and immigration departments. I do not hear complaints about those cuts nearly as much as I hear complaints about cuts to health care.
Government members campaigned as being the saviours of medicare. Then they turned around and cut $7 billion out of transfers to the provinces, over $3 billion of which went to health care. I sat before the finance committee today and heard all kinds of health care professionals pound on the desk very forthrightly because they are so frustrated. They know that on the one hand the federal government is saying that it is the saviour of health care and do not dare try and break the Canada Health Act. Then the Liberals turn around and cut every cent they can out of it and tell people to go and do what they can. That is blatant hypocrisy.
People from Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba who protest in front of legislatures about cuts to hospital funding should get on a plane and come and protest on the lawn of the House of Commons because this where the problem began. There is the duplicity of the government which on the one hand says it is the saviour of health care and on the other hand cuts the heart out of it.
On the question of how we would deal with Quebec, the member is absolutely wrong when he says that we bash Quebec every day. That is completely false. We are very, very upset about the Bombardier deal. However we are the ones who propose to give Quebecers the tools in the form of lower taxes. One-quarter of all taxpayers in the country come from Quebec. We are going to give three million people in Quebec lower taxes. A tremendous amount of stimulus will go into the economy of Quebec, $2,000 per family by the year 2000 in the province of Quebec. They will create a tremendous amount of their own jobs.
I am sure the member has said when he is speaking to his constituents that small business creates jobs in this country. Then let us give the people who create the jobs the tools to create them.
On the political side, we say let us give the people of Quebec and the Government of Quebec the tools they need to chart the future of Quebec. The people of Quebec do have a unique language, a unique culture and a unique history. Let us give them the tools and give them the jurisdiction to determine the future of the people of Quebec. That would go over well if every province had to do that.
That is how we are going to deal with the people of Quebec and the Quebec government.