Mr. Chairman, the last point I will make on the sponsorship scandal is to comment, for the record, that I do not mind spending $40 million a year or even more if it means promoting the Confederation of Canada across the country to remind Canadians what a great and fragile nation we are dealing with today.
What I do object to is a great deal of that money is being spent in one province, the province of Quebec, on the unity issue. Coming from western Canada, especially rural western Canada, there is barely any visibility or one would never know there is a strong central government in Canada. With all the privatization, cutbacks and closing of public institutions, there is not even a federal building in a small town in rural Manitoba. However at the post office in the 7-Eleven, a whole generation of kids are growing up thinking the post office is 7-Eleven. They do not give the Canadian government credit for those fixtures. The only presence of the federal government might be rented space in a strip mall.
I do not think we should throw out the baby out with the bathwater and cancel the federal government sponsorship programs. If the minister is going to continue with the $40 million or more per year, would he commit to each province getting an equal amount of this $40 million, at least by ratio and proportion? Will he look retroactively at some makeup pay for some of those provinces like mine and probably other provinces in Atlantic Canada that were ignored and bypassed by these programs? Will he make the commitment that if spending continues, it will be done on a fair shared basis across the country?