Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague, the hon. member for South Shore, on his very lucid and erudite comments on this matter.
I compliment him particularly on his comments with regard to the protection of minority rights and what proposition 17 does not do. It bears repeating. The hon. member and I have a long history in fighting to protect minority rights. In both our support for this proposition there is an acknowledgement that neither one of us would support this if we felt minority rights were in any way under attack.
With regard to religious education, it might come as a horrible warning for some of the people who are against the amendment to know that I am a product of Catholic religious education from age 5 until I graduated with an honours degree in English literature at the age of 22. Be careful, gentlemen from the Reform Party, you may get in more trouble.
That may account in some ways for the fact that I do speak very strongly for minority rights. Nonetheless, I want to put a specific question to my colleague from the South Shore.
The hon. member for Delta spoke a few minutes ago a fuzzy question. I ask the hon. member for South Shore, a practising lawyer, what he thinks about the following question, whether he thinks it is at all fuzzy, as a practising lawyer, as a former schoolteacher, as someone born in Newfoundland.
Does he support revising term 17 in the manner proposed by the government to enable reform of the denominational, educational system, yes or no? As it was put to the people of Newfoundland, I ask the hon. member for South Shore if he thinks this is a fuzzy question.