Mr. Speaker, the words that keep coming back to me when I think of regional development are the words that came out of the Prime Minister when he was the opposition leader. I think the words he used were, “it breeds defeatism”.
What happens is that certain areas of the country deserve to have certain infrastructure so they can compete on a level playing field. I think it is important that we allow that infrastructure to develop so that any business or group competing on a national level is not put behind the eight ball. One of the key things about regional economic development is allowing that to happen, otherwise if we just take a laissez-faire attitude we end up with a concentration of population in certain areas.
Maybe what they are thinking is that we have five major centres, which are the five cities, and everybody should crowd in. I do not think that is the right way to look at it and that is certainly not my view of Canada. My view of Canada is having people right across Canada, up into the north, into the south and to both sides, east and west, so we can all work together and develop the country to be all that it can be.