Mr. Speaker, the Quebec Premier's trade mission to Mexico led to the signing of 24 agreements totaling $66 million and creating some 500 new jobs. This collective effort is proof that there are undeniable economic, political and cultural ties with Mexico.
The collaboration of the federal government ought to have been a given. We would have liked to have seen the federal government not making a spectacle of itself in the eyes of the Mexicans by refusing to organize a meeting between the Mexican President and Mr. Bouchard. We would have preferred not to have had to read an editorial in the major Mexican newspaper Universal that the Prime Minister of Canada had been wrong.
This episode has done nothing to prevent the trade mission from paving the way to a new and unprecedented openness between Quebec and the Americas. As the decade of the Americas gains momentum, Quebec has created a dynamic aimed at building a closer relationship with the countries of Latin America.
Henceforth, and forever more, Quebec will continue to open itself up to the world, regardless of the federal government's rigidity.