Very well, Mr. Speaker. I stand corrected.
These folks came to meet him. At that point, they were rudely told: "You are not important". People had the indecency to tell them: "You do not count". They were treated in a discourteous, ill mannered and disrespectful way.
These people from back home said some things I would not repeat in this House, although they are very polite. They said: "Please tell your colleagues across the way that they have no manners". The people from the Gaspé and from Matapédia-Matane call it poor manners when, after having travelled on the bus for 17 hours to meet Canada's first citizen, they get the brush off because, unfortunately, he does not particularly feel the need to exert himself since he will not necessarily find himself unemployed tomorrow. He will lose the next elections, but he will not necessarily be unemployed, because he has good connections. But the people where I come from rarely have connections.
In addition to 17 hours on the road from the Gaspé via my riding, they put in another 18 on the return trip to make a total of 35 hours on the road-a solid work week. All that to come and see the Prime Minister, who did not even condescend to meet them.
Since they could not see the Prime Minister, they thought they would ask to see Mr. Martin. Mr. Martin was not willing either.
The first request they addressed to the Minister of Human Resources Development was refused with the words: "It is a very important issue, but when people want to see me they have to ask me a week in advance". People from back home are not used to doing that. Although they are very polite, they are not used to all this red tape, because they themselves earn a living by the sweat of their brows. They work day and night. There may be a few things they do not know, but they do know certain things. They know how to be polite; they know when one can or cannot be received.
We asked the people from back home to be extremely polite. To which they replied: "No problem. We are always polite. We know all about politeness". There are, however, other people across the way, including the Prime Minister, who do not know about it.
I am speaking on their behalf today. These people have been deeply hurt. I wish to thank my colleagues from Mercier, Lévis and Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup for their hard work. They went all the way. But the people from back home are also patient. Even though they are both polite and patient, they said: "If the Prime Minister does not want to meet with us, what can we do? If the Minister of Finance does not want to meet with us, what is left for us to do?"
The Minister of Human Resources Development finally said: "Yes, I could perhaps meet with you". So the people said: "Look, we have been waiting for two hours. We still have a 18-hour trip back home to the Gaspé region". Our leader met with them and told them: "This is what the Bloc has done, what we wanted to do". We tried in every possible way-by appealing to their minds and their hearts-to make those people understand all this, but they refuse to understand.
Some people from my riding talked to me, including the mayor of Saint-Luc, who was representing a number of regional county municipalities. She said to me: "What more can we do? Will other action have to be taken, like tabling petitions? You have given 120 per cent, but they just will not listen".
The same people told me: "We are calm, understanding people. But to want to use this insurance money that we have been paying for and that employers have been paying for to reduce the deficit, that we will never understand. We will never stand for it; it is just too cruel". It is cruel, but not only for these people, who, on an individual basis, could probably wait a tad longer.
In my community, often, in fairly large families, one spouse works away from home, while the other works, perhaps even harder, at home. In such cases, the family income is never very high, which means that the whole family is affected. Yesterday, a young couple told me: "If we did not have four kids, it would not be so bad, we could remain calm a while longer, but we do not think we will be able to any longer".
I would like my hon. colleagues opposite to understand. There must be people who are having difficulties, people on unemployment in their ridings as well. I call upon my colleagues opposite and all members of this House to go out and talk to these people. I am sorry to have to put it this way, but people out there are disgusted. When I saw them off at the bus, they told me: "We have had it". And when they say they have had it, they mean they have had it up to here.