Mr. Speaker, first I want to tell the hon. member that he is not the only person interested in partnership. I have been a member of this House for many years and I work very hard to develop a partnership in Canada.
Part of the problem, as I said in my speeches, is looking at this in isolation. There are many members of the House who have gone into their own regions. When the Meech Lake accord came in front of the House, it was not exactly the most popular proposal in my constituency in Winnipeg, but it was presented as a way of reaching out and forming a partnership. I voted for it and so did my friend from Winnipeg Transcona. It was done even though public opinion at the time in western Canada was very much against it. However, I believed it was a way of building a bridge.
I do not need to be lectured by this hon. member about what it takes to try to build bridges. I have not given up on that. I still believe in this country. I still believe in building bridges. I still believe there is an enormous advantage for all of us in working together, not only for ourselves as I said in my speech, but for the rest of the world. If we can prove that it can happen, that we do not have to separate and form little countries around small groups of people, that we can find strength in diversity and build those bridges, then it is a model this world desperately needs and desperately cries out for.
The hon. member talks about employment insurance. Perhaps one of the reasons people in his riding did not respond is that I am not sure he told them what was in the bill. He did not tell them that in the employment insurance bill was an absolute guarantee of income for low income Canadians. For the first time in the history of that act the people he is talking about are now guaranteed a basic income, something we have been talking about in this House for 30 or 40 years.
I bet the hon. member did not have anything to say about that. He did not talk about the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be reinvested to find jobs. I have never heard a Bloc member credit the fact that what we are saying to the poor people in his riding and everywhere else is that the best way out of poverty is to have a job. And the best way to get a job is to make sure that one has the opportunity to have that job is to reinvest in skills, to reinvest in developing that job, to reinvest in changing the economy; in other words, to be really ready to face change and not hide from it, not fear it, not exploit it, but to face change-
We must face the need to adjust the economy, for the benefit of all Canadians.