Mr. Speaker, I am both delighted and privileged to rise on this motion by the official opposition and to debate with some of my colleagues.
I hope people will pay particular attention to what I say here. I would like to try to clarify, once and for all, the famous question the Prime Minister has been harping on in response to our questions and the question our eminent colleague has just asked my colleague for Laval-Centre.
There were indeed two referendums in Quebec, and they were both democratic. They followed the principles of democracy. In 1976, the Lévesque government was elected on its promise to hold a referendum in its first term of office, a promise the Lévesque government kept.
During the election campaign, Mr. Trudeau and 74 of 75 of his followers came to Quebec and put their head on the block.
I even remember Mr. Trudeau saying: "Hark ye well, Canada. We are not going to ask Quebec to vote no and then drop it. You
will look after it afterwards. You will find a solution for Quebec. You will be asked to meet Quebec's needs". This is what your Mr. Trudeau came to tell us in Montreal, at the Paul-Sauvé arena. Since then, they have demolished the arena, so ashamed were they of Mr. Trudeau's unkept promises. Because of this, they demolished the Paul-Sauvé arena afterwards. The promises were not kept.
Then another government came along. It said: "The federal government had promised to do certain things. Look what it has done". During the night of the long knives, they repatriated a Constitution we never signed and which might even be illegal because it has not been translated into French. That is what we just found out. This is a Constitution they wanted to impose on us.
So, we said: "Look, this does not work. Elect us-that is taking place in 1994-and we promise to hold a new referendum, given that the Liberals did not keep their word. They did not keep their word and, as a result, we are no further ahead as a people". That is how Mr. Parizeau's government came to be voted in office, and this government kept its word and held a referendum within more or less the first year of its mandate.
Moving to the events in Verdun now. Verdun-what a coincidence-you probably recall what happened in Verdun back in 1914. In Verdun, the Prime Minister made a number of promises. "Vote no and you can be sure things will change", he said. More of the same hogwash. They still think we can be fooled. Do we look like fools? Think again. We will not be taken in again. We are not fools. This time again, we were promised the world, but the Prime Minister is proving unable to deliver the merchandise.
It is quite obvious that there will be a third referendum. Three is a magic number, they say. Between the first and the second one, we gained only ten points. We are just four or five tenths short of a victory. You crow about winning the referendum with 50.4 per cent of the votes. This means that we would need as little as that to win a future referendum and our victory would be as valid as yours.
We have given the Prime Minister two chances. This is the same Prime Minister. We have given him two chances and he failed both times. The reason why we respect democracy is that we live in Canada and we pay our taxes-we have not started boycotting our taxes; the day may come, but we are not there yet-we pay our taxes and we are still in Canada because even though 49.6 per cent of Quebecers want to leave, that was still not enough. Every day since we were elected to this House, we find more reasons to leave. They closed the Tokamak facility and gave the money to Triumph in British Columbia. They wash off their hands of what is happening at the Montreal airport, saying it is none of our business. Every day, we could look at more issues and find new reasons to leave. There are more than enough reasons.
The most recent one is unemployment insurance. My colleague across the way who is always interrupting me should take a good look at his seat because it may be the last time he sees it. New Brunswick is fed up with your policies. They would have us believe that Canada is the greatest country in the world. The Prime Minister keeps bragging about it. But when he gives out our statistics, the Prime Minister is deceiving the UN. They forget to mention our illiteracy rate. If they gave the real number of illiterate Canadians-not functional illiterates, but real illiterates-we would come in fourth place. We would not be No. 1 but No. 4. Stop lying to the people. They are fed up with your tactics.
Furthermore, the reason why Canada is prosperous is not because we have a federal system of government, but because Canadians and Quebecers work hard day after day. It is not the federal government's doing; that, too, is a lie.