Madam Speaker, I found the comments by the hon. member for Outremont very interesting, especially his claim that there is only one national party in this House.
If we look at the NDP, we can clearly see it is also present across the country. We do not have two faces like the Liberal Party shows in the provinces. All across the country, the NDP has always respected the French fact and the official languages. It was an NDP government in British Columbia that set up the francophone school board to respect the rights of francophones. It was the NDP in Saskatchewan and Manitoba that passed official languages legislation to represent French-speaking minorities better in those two provinces. It was an NDP government in Ontario that augmented rights for francophones in that province.
New Democratic members like Léo Piquette, Alexa McDonough and Elizabeth Weir have worked in the provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Alberta, for example—to promote the rights of francophones.
As a national party—a party that exists all across the country—we do not speak with one voice in Ottawa and another in the provinces. We are united, we are consistent and we are upholding our principles of promoting both official languages and the rights of both English- and French-speaking minority groups across the country. We respect the official languages.
It is interesting to be here today to debate the fiscal imbalance. We know very well that it is because, in the current make-up of this House, two thirds of Quebec's representatives are in the Bloc Québécois. We know that the Liberal Party's bad management has led us to the point we are at today, facing the same sort of quarrels and arguments that prevent the real needs of Quebeckers and all Canadians from being represented and respected.
We know there is a crisis of homelessness, a crisis in health care, a crisis in post-secondary education, a crisis in the fiscal imbalance. This is my question for the hon. member. Faced with all these facts, how can he claim that the Liberal government has advanced the cause of national unity and made Canada stronger than ever?
We know very well that in communities across this land, Canadians are suffering more than ever, that there are crises in many fields because of a lack of federal funding, and that all provinces have problems with the fiscal imbalance, which means that the immediate and urgent needs of Canadians are not being met.