Mr. Speaker, the minister, in endlessly repeating statistics, must remember that they do not apply to Ottawa and that she should perhaps correct her geography when she mentions them.
My question is for the Minister of Natural Resources. Given the government's significant expenditures for all of its activities, Quebecers have a hard time understanding how $7.2 million could represent a stumbling block for the federal government, which is thus compromising a research and development project that creates jobs and is vital to Quebec.
How does the minister explain that it was suddenly so difficult, indeed impossible, to come up with $7 million for Quebec's tokamak project, when her colleague, the Minister of Industry, only a few months ago increased federal funding for the federal TRIUMF project in British Columbia by $15 million a year?