Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just spoken has taken exception to some of my comments.
I would remind him that he was once a member of the National Assembly, and I find it odd to see a member from Quebec who sat in the National Assembly, who experienced the quality and the greatness of the democratic debate there and of the consensuses that develop occasionally and who knows that it is only rarely that an unanimous resolution can be achieved, question the consultations that these members from Quebec carried out in their ridings to reach a consensus.
But he does not know what consensus is, because when he was in the National Assembly and when his premier, Mr. Bourassa, introduced Bill 178 which met the expectations of both anglophone and francophone communities, he and a couple of his colleagues voted against the consensus that existed in Quebec, and for this he was no longer welcome in his own Liberal Party and he had to come here to beg for a job, perhaps eight or ten years before he actually got elected to this House.
However, it is typical of the Liberal Party to pick up people like that. The proof is that there was Mr. Harper who sat here, Mrs. Carstairs was named to the Senate. Clyde Wells will most likely be appointed one day to the supreme court. This year, they have a new batch: the members for Abitibi, Bourassa and Anjou, they are the Liberal Party's new batch.