Mr. Speaker, at least now it is out in the open. On the weekend the Prime Minister was singing the praises of what? Patronage. He called a $13 million grant to a call centre in Cape Breton patronage at its best.
But that is not what he and his Liberal friends called ACOA in 1988. I can remember reading in Hansard the Minister of Veterans Affairs said that we should call ACOA the Atlantic Canada overblown agency. And David Dingwall went on to say that ACOA was an unmitigated disaster. What were they worried about? They were worried about patronage.
Why was patronage so bad back then but it tastes so good now?