Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles who just spoke that the motion he was supposed to speak to reads as follows:
That...the House demand that the government place amateur athletes at the heart of its concerns and make a commitment to placing their interests before the interests of professional sport.
The member spoke for 10 minutes and he used 85% of his time to talk about professional sport. He says he is very concerned about amateur sport and he wants the government to give priority to amateur sport, which it already does. As a matter of fact, the $57 million spent yearly by the Department of Canadian Heritage on sport in Canada goes entirely to amateur sport. Professional sport gets nothing. I do not know if he would like our priorities to be geared even more towards amateur sport. I personally hope that, in the future, we will be able to increase our support for amateur sport, but amateur sport already gets 100% of our funding for sport, so what more does the member want? How could we give amateur sport greater priority?
How can the hon. member explain the fact that his party has expressed its opposition to a recommendation—it is opposed to several recommendations, but I am talking about one in particular—regarding the creation of a department of sports and youth? Since the member himself wants everything to be done to help amateur sport, how can he explain the Bloc's position against the creation of such a department?