Mr. Speaker, last Friday I spent two hours with a group of highly concerned citizens who met at the McGill faculty club. They were discussing possible steps that might be taken to create a renaissance in the city of Montreal.
These were people who have spent all their professional and business working lives in Quebec and Montreal. They have seen this wonderful Canadian city go from one of the most prominent, rapidly growing, charming and great cities of North America into a tailspin that makes them extremely sad. They all acknowledge the root cause. What they were trying to do was to say: What can we do to reassure the world to come back to Montreal even though this threat exists?
Unfortunately, I did not have much good advice for them. I talked about my experiences with countries that have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and other of the Asian tigers. They rejected the view that the separatist government, if it comes into power, would model itself after those countries because of its great commitment to social democratic values meddling in the economy. That is not reassuring for any of the potential businesses that might consider moving to Montreal.
The insight I gained is that it is not just the idea there might be separation with all of the uncertainties surrounding it. There is also the added problem that all of the pronouncements we have heard until quite recently from Mr. Bouchard are that we will continue to have huge government spending on all kinds of worthy projects which are preventing the growth of the economy and the restoration of confidence.
I do not know the answers. I would say to my colleague there is no doubt that the threat of separation, plus the prospect of what might happen after separation by a very left wing government, carries the primary responsibility for the sad decline of the city of Montreal from one of the great cities in North America to a city with a sick economy.