Mr. Speaker, it is very relevant when I talk about grants in the Prime Minister's riding because we are talking about job creation grants. Devco has been operating for the last 33 years with $2 billion in grant money from successive governments. During that time governments have tried to argue that job creation grants, $2 billion worth, are an excellent way to promote full employment. It is $2 billion later and now everybody is going to be laid off.
As another example, the same thing is happening in the Prime Minister's riding. I will quote myself. It is very relevant. It made the front page of the National Post a week or two ago. Let me just go over this again for the benefit of the House.
There is only one job creation grant in the entire country that ended up in a trust fund over the transitional jobs fund, one grant in the entire country. That trust fund proved to be illegal. It happened in only one place and that was in the Prime Minister's riding. It benefited only one person and it was not Santa Claus. The person it benefited was Claude Gauthier, a man who bought $500,000 of the Prime Minister's land and his golf course. He gave $10,000 to the Prime Minister's personal re-election campaign. He got a $6 million CIDA grant. That would all be fine, but the problem is that the jobs created in that area went from 115 to 45.
Grants like this do not create jobs; they create dependency and they create patronage. That is why we are in the situation we are in today, excessive government grants over a long period of time with no long term plan to get out of it.