Mr. Speaker, as the election approaches, the federal troops in Quebec are panicking. The proof is that a provincial Liberal, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, is supporting the present Conservative member for Sherbrooke, with the blessing of the Liberal ministers of finance, intergovernmental affairs, and citizenship and immigration.
The electoral message sent to the Quebec people by federalists is therefore the following one: "Do not vote on the basis of the ideas presented by the federalist parties, because in the end, Liberal or Conservative, it boils down to the same thing. You must vote against the Bloc Quebecois".
What federalists fear most is that Quebecers will once again rise up, as they did in 1993, and take real power for themselves by voting for the Bloc Quebecois, the only federal party devoted to the defence of Quebec's interests until sovereignty is achieved.
When provincial Liberals start supporting federal Conservative candidates, it means that the federal Liberal Party, the head office, as the Prime Minister so often says in this House, has quite simply lost control of its provincial branch offices.