Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the hon. member for Saint-Jean.
I am happy to discuss the Fourth Report of the Standing Committee on Finance, which was submitted on October 31, 1996, particularly the dissenting opinion tabled by the official opposition in this regard.
It is unacceptable that the Liberal majority of the Standing Committee on Finance even thought for one moment, after analyzing all the arguments for and against federal interference in a matter of provincial jurisdiction, to basically recommend that a national securities commission, a Canadian securities commission, be established.
We debated this issue in committee, we received briefs, we solicited the views of various parties across Canada, in particular the Quebec government, the players in the Quebec securities field, and we found that there was a consensus to the effect that a Canadian securities commission should not be established, for three reasons.
First, pursuant to the Constitution Act, 1982, which Quebec never signed and was forced to swallow, even against the will of the great majority of the members of the National Assembly, the area of securities is exclusively under Quebec's jurisdiction. The federal government is violating its own Constitution Act. Is this normal?
The second reason is that, if the government creates a national securities commission, it will cause all the expertise in the area of taxation, accounting, portfolio management and stock exchange management to move from Montreal to Toronto and also from Vancouver to Toronto.
If the federal government's vision is to centralize all financial activity in Toronto, it must tell us. We need to know because the decision to create this national securities commission would make
Toronto the financial and securities capital of Canada, to the detriment of other regions.
In Quebec alone, we are talking about the survival of 15 000 registered dealers and advisors. We are talking about an annual trading volume of 2.9 billion shares. We are talking about $39 billion worth of shares that are traded each year.
It is unacceptable that, because of a decision based on the Liberal Party of Canada's bad habit of wanting to centralize everything at all cost within the federal government or through federal regulation, all that will be abandoned in order to meet the partisan, political and incomprehensible objectives of the Liberals. There is unanimity in Quebec with regard to the securities sector.
I would like to quote some excerpts from the five-year report tabled by the Quebec government in December 1993 regarding the implementation of the Securities Act. It was a Liberal government, and the minister responsible for securities was Mrs. Louise Robic, a good Liberal without a doubt.