Madam Speaker, I would like to make a couple of comments in response to the remarks by the last two speakers from the Liberal Party. One of them spoke of sharing powers, and the other had essentially the same opinions, but expressed them differently.
I would like to know how a power can be shared effectively. Powers and jurisdictions can be shared. If there are 10 jurisdictions, one level of government can look after five of them and another level can look after the other five. You could call that sharing jurisdictions.
However, what this government is trying to do is to share a single jurisdiction. It is as if two cooks were preparing the same soup. One of the cooks adds salt and the other adds a little more to the soup to ensure a salty taste, and get the credit for it. The result is a very salty and unpleasant soup. That is the problem with jurisdictions.
We tell the federal government that we have no objections to its keeping some jurisdictions, like national defence, for itself. But education is ours. We know this field best. Get out of it. The federal government insists on having its own cook add salt to the soup. If need be, it will remove some of the ingredients Quebec uses and use some of its own instead.
That is why we were after the truth. I asked the question of a Liberal member after the budget. I told her that the millennium fund did not suit Quebeckers and the students in Quebec, because we already had our own system. Her response was that it was fine, there would be an extra scholarship for her.
What is important, as far as the Liberals are concerned, as I could see from the remarks of the Liberal member, is the failure to see whether the need was consistent for all students. That was not the case. What counted was to ensure all students would enjoy the same measure so that the federal government would be visible. It is more important to meet the individual needs of each of the provinces than to use the same remedy for all students to ensure the federal government gets the credit for adding the last of the spices to the soup I used as an example.
I would therefore ask the member who spoke just before me to explain this sharing of jurisdictions, as he sees it. Does he share the opinion of the federal member who told me she would have an extra scholarship? Is that really the focus of this government?