Madam Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest to the words of my colleague. I believe he is absolutely right. There are particularities to the west as there are to Quebec, but I believe the Liberal government would be well advised to announce its intentions when it is travelling in the regions, particularly in Quebec.
I have an anecdote to relate in this connection. Over Easter, a minister decided to come to the Charlevoix region, one of the loveliest regions of Quebec. Did he come to the casino, or to visit his relatives? Of course, in order to justify his travel allowance, the minister had to meet the press, or a mayor, or visit an arts centre.
He ought to have given the MP for Charlevoix a call to say “I would like to consult your area of the riding, I would like to meet with local unemployed people in order to see whether the $27.3 million in cuts in Charlevoix are doing much harm. I would like to meet the people of Charlevoix in order to see whether they are frustrated by our unkept promises made in 1997. I would like to meet the people of Charlevoix to see what effects our transfer payments to the provinces have had on health and education”.
I would have liked to have got a group of women together so that they could tell him how the President of Treasury Board is refusing to give public servants pay equity. I would have liked to have got a group of young people together to tell him how the federal government is refusing to withdraw from collective agreements the orphan clause which penalizes very young workers.
But no. When ministers travel to the regions, they do so solely to raise their profile. We have seen that the problem is the same in the west, as the Reform Party pointed out this morning. Quebec is recognized as a region. I believe that Quebec has been calling for that right for some years now. The Bloc Quebecois has been doing so in the House of Commons since 1993.
There is a problem of duplication and overlap, and I would like the hon. member for Témiscamingue to give us some other examples. He has already mentioned the millennium scholarships, to demonstrate that the Government of Quebec is acknowledged by the Canadian government as a region, as a kind of board.