Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, for his question. This allows me to provide my views on what happened in my riding and his, of course.
My colleague is perfectly right when he says that this process has been sidetracked. I humbly believe that the decision was made earlier.
For example, in my riding, municipal councils, towns, organizations, the chamber of commerce, unions were unanimous. Here in the House, we were also unanimous. The Bloc Quebecois had requested two more members, not only for the demographic weight of my region, but also for Quebec as a whole. Indeed, all the submissions that were made asked for two more members. Everyone was unanimous on this. If one opposing submission had been made, I would have asked myself some serious questions. I would have said: “This is quite a submission. It carries a lot of weight, because it opposes all the others”.
There were about one hundred submissions. I did not count them, but all were in favour of the Bloc Quebecois' request to provide two members to Quebec and to keep the riding of Manicouagan the way it is now, that is to keep the same dimensions, because it was large enough, and also to keep the riding of Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay the way it is now.
Mr. Speaker, you are perfectly right. I believe this was a charade. It was decided in advance, and the government had to rush. It had to introduce a bill to shorten the time limits, to hold an early election as soon as possible to ensure that the next prime minister would not have to answer the opposition's questions in the House.