Mr. Speaker, these are my personal notes. He is trying to say they are props. You can start in with the same old refrain, dear colleagues. Go ahead, there is more fun ahead.
The government plays a large and critical role in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Why? Because our economy in Abitibi-Témiscamingue is always up and down like a yo-yo, depending on market prices, on the price of metals, gold, copper, or the price of softwood lumber and particle board. With people from our area and from the Province of Quebec, and the government in power, we decided that there should be a regional and local development fund, that is the public and parapublic sector, in which the Government of Canada is involved, and in which the Government of Quebec is also involved.
If we supply human resources in our region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, almost 53% of the funds are provided through partnerships.
Why those funds? Where do they come from? I will tell you. They come either from Desjardins investments, or from the FTQ. I hear the member for Témiscamingue talking about a donation, when he means a loan, and saying that a loan is a donation, that it is the same thing. I never understood the story. It is true that the donation was $1.7 million to the Bloc Quebecois before the 1993 campaign, but they never noticed that the donation was not like the one borrowers are given in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, that is, the interest was thrown in. If the interest on loans is 6%, what they got at 2% is a donation. In any event, we will come back to this.
In conclusion, our people, whether we are talking about the Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec, or through the Federal Office of Regional Development for Quebec and the CDIC, are partners contributing to the creation of jobs in order to lower unemployment.