Mr. Speaker, to continue in the same vein as the Reform Party member who just spoke, the question is, did the minister come up with the money and did he suggest to the province of Manitoba that it take over responsibility for enforcing the Young Offenders Act.
Given that the parliamentary secretary represents a riding in Quebec, I hope that he is making his point of view known to cabinet or at least to his minister when he meets with him. I remind him—and there is even agreement on the other side about the figures—that an amount of between $77 million and $82 million is owed to Quebec by the federal government for the implementation of the Young Offenders Act.
Before finding money to help Manitoba enforce a law, and since Quebec has been enforcing the legislation for quite some time, I would ask the government to pay its debt of between $77 million and $82 million.
This being said, my question has more to do with the speech made by the parliamentary secretary. If the hon. member was present when the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa spoke, he may have noticed that the secretary of state mentioned that narcotics are at the root of several problems, that they are largely responsible for crime in Canada. We know about narcodollars, money laundering, etc.
I have a very simple question for the parliamentary secretary. Since Canada is known internationally as the number one country for money laundering—possibly hundreds of billions of dollars annually—what is the federal government waiting for to introduce legislation that would prohibit this and make it impossible to launder money in Canada as in other countries including the United States where it is a lot more difficult to launder money than it is here?