Mr. Speaker, I will set out the reason for this bill, and its impact.
Its impact is not to change the vocation of federal intervention in regional economic development, but to ensure that, instead of decisions coming under the jurisdiction of another minister, the Minister of Industry, they will be made autonomously by Quebec, for Quebec and with Quebec.
I am not the one that politicized the debate. I brought in this bill as a technical bill. The Bloc Québécois seized on an opportunity to try to politicize the bill. The point of their interventions was to get us to transfer Economic Development Canada funds to Quebec, purely and simply, and to have no more to do with them.
I refuse to do that. I refuse to abdicate my responsibilities. They are the ones who have politicized the debate. What I find interesting in what was said is the reference to propagandizing the regions. I do not think they can give us any lectures on humility. They are, I think, always there when we make announcements. They never miss a photo op. It is bit silly, this business of the pot calling the kettle black.
As far as politicizing the debate is concerned, what I would have liked to have seen, and what three political parties understood in the same way, is that we were taking advantage of this welcome debate to progress further and to reflect together on the best way to help Quebec develop economically.
However, unlike the other three parties in this House, the Bloc got obsessed by the idea that the federal government should be out of it completely. They want no more federal presence. They want to use the back door to get what they did not manage to get at the front. That is all very fine, and it is their right, their privilege and prerogative, but I and my Liberal government also have the prerogative to say that we refuse to abdicate our responsibilities just because the Bloc would like us to.