Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Mississauga-South mentioned that I should go to various places in Canada to get to know it. I will offer him the same thing. It is unfortunate that he will not be able to answer, but I wanted to ask him if he has ever been very close to my riding, in Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, if he has ever travelled around the Île d'Orléans, if he has ever been on the Beaupré coast, if he has ever seen the heritage character of the Royale Avenue, in Beauport.
It reminds me that, in 1980, when I was campaigning door to door and speaking with Mrs. Asselin, my neighbour in Chicoutimi, she told me: "Michel, I cannot vote yes, because we will lose the Rockies". I said: "But the Montmorency falls in my riding will not stop flowing if we become sovereign tomorrow morning. A valve will not be installed at the top of them. We will be able to come and visit them, and we will be able to go see the Rockies". The Alps are in a different country, and when we want to visit them, we take the plane and go see them.
The Rocky Mountains as the symbol of Canadian unity, what a joke. Anyway, you are cutting the railway, you are cutting the very thing that led to Canada being built, the railway. And you, the Liberals, are hacking it to bits. Mr. Bouchard, last night, said it: a project such as the high speed train, which could link Quebec to Windsor, would be an interesting partnership project. I made some speeches here on the HST, some carefully wrought speeches at 5.30
p.m., the best time slot, and of the 177 Liberal members in front of me who could have come to listen to my speech on the HST-on which I had worked three days and three nights-not one was there to listen to it. So, you do not have a prayer.
The hon. member speaks of the "best country in the world", yet, he seems to be forgetting that the "best country in the world" is mortgaged to the hilt and living on credit. Personally, I could have a fantastic lifestyle if I loaded my credit cards to the limit. That is precisely what the "best country in the world" is doing. It is living on borrowed money, with every single baby born in the past ten minutes already saddled with a $20,000 debt. It is incredible. They will never convince us that ours is the "best country in the world".
The hon. member said: "I understand, the member is a separatist". Just saying the word "separatist" makes them feel better. Yes, I am a separatist. The member is right. I admit it. But saying that I do not like Canada is not true.
What we want, far from destroying your country, is a country we can call our own. I like Canada, and I do enjoy travelling in Canada. When I am in Vancouver, I find English Bay quite beautiful. When I visited Thunder Bay with the hon. member for Thunder Bay, I enjoyed Lake Superior. We do not want to destroy your country, but simply to build our own.
Furthermore, we heard the hon. member's heartfelt cry, because the Liberal Party does have a heart. That reminded me of 1967, when I first got interested in politics. I was only 14 years old then, but I still remember the large signs saying: "Canada, stand together; understand together". We are now in 1996, but how could we explain that we reacted to such words in 1967? How is it that nowadays, in 1996, there are still 50 or 51 per cent of people in Quebec saying that this country is not working? Will you, once and for all, get it into your head that this country is not working? Get that into your head.
Why is it that, since 1967, there are sovereignists saying: "We want to get out. Let us go. We want to leave"? Why are you not letting us go? Because it suits you that we stay.
Here is my last point, because I want to give other members who would like to speak the opportunity to do so. I like that, it gives us the opportunity to make another speech.
Dropping out from school, I agree with the hon. member, falls within the school boards' jurisdiction. I agree that it is up to the school boards to put whatever energy the money is needed into preventing dropping out. However, when I made my point about dropping out, it was to point out that that happens within a whole economic climate, like suicide among young people. We see an increase in the number of dropouts in the current economic conditions.