Mr. Speaker, despite the representations made by Desjardins to be involved in the sale of Petro-Canada shares, the Quebec firm was ignored. Yesterday, the Prime Minister tried to explain this oversight—as he calls it—by saying that it was outside consultants who told the Department of Finance which firms should be retained for that operation.
Are we to conclude that it is on the basis of the recommendations of these outside consultants that the Department of Finance ignored Quebec's most important financial institution? Who had the last word in the selection of the firms: the Minister of Finance or the so-called experts?