Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech and for having brought to the attention of this House the importance of supporting volunteer action in the various communities of Canada and Quebec.
I know that some months ago the federal government felt the need to do its part toward helping the communities. A framework agreement was negotiated between the government and the communities of Canada and Quebec to make financial support possible.
I think that this government always has the same reflex, which is not negative in itself, to always involve the bureaucracy. There are merits to that. I do, however, think that there is no department which has as much of a finger on the pulse of all the communities as this House of Commons does. We have a representative of this House in each and every one of the 301 ridings in Canada and Quebec.
Why does the government not wish to provide community assistance via these representatives? We are in the best position to identify local needs.
I will just point out in closing that we in Quebec have asked ourselves whether there was not a relative advantage on the partisan level which would work in favour of the incumbent when there was an election, if a discretionary budget of this nature were allocated. The Quebec chief electoral office looked into this and the finding was that, no, there would not be an advantage to an incumbent.
So there is also no need to worry about a partisan advantage, because this would all be jointly administered by the MPs and the department identified as the administrator of the program, as is the case with the summer career placements and HRDC.