Madam Speaker, I am a little bit disappointed by the question asked by my colleague from the NDP for two reasons. First of all, as I mentioned in my speech, right now Canada does not have an independent monetary policy. We could study the issue in committee and I think we would come to the conclusion that our monetary policy is not independent and we would have to take it from there.
Second, I do not see why such proud countries as France, Germany with its Deutschmark, Belgium, Italy and Spain, old countries that were built on a very strong brand of nationalism, would be willing not to give up their monetary sovereignty, but rather to pool it. Maybe the notion of sovereignty in the 21st century is more like a pooling of individual sovereignties.
Here is an example. The Eurocoin, the new European currency, is France's idea. The franc was very closely linked to the Deutschmark, Germany's currency. France saw it had no influence on German monetary policy. It had no representative in the Bundesbank. What did it do? It proposed the adoption of a common currency. As a matter of fact, France was behind the adoption of the Maastricht treaty.
What happened? France now has a representative in the European Central Bank, whereas previously it did not have any control over European monetary policy, which, for all intents and purposes, was Germany's monetary policy. France did not lose any sovereignty; it gained some.