Mr. Speaker, I think that the sentiments just expressed by my colleague are shared. It is also obvious that, on the plane of ideas, we are at diametrically opposite poles.
My colleague said that my ideas were an anachronism, that they were obsolete. It was only last year, as he himself mentioned, that the House of Commons finally recognized the existence of the Quebec nation. Recognizing the existence of a nation is more than a symbolic act. Nations, like individuals, have fundamental rights. The most fundamental of them is the right of a nation to itself control the social, economic and cultural development of its own society, that is, the right of self-determination.
One cannot, on the one hand, recognize that the Quebec nation exists and has the right to make choices different from those of Canada, and on the other, deny to it that right by maintaining the federal spending power of which we have been speaking since this morning. The spending power in areas of Quebec jurisdiction is a denial of our integrity, a denial of the Quebec nation.
I repeat: my colleague considered my comments to be an anachronism and obsolete. I do not think there us anything obsolete about the recognition of Quebec as a nation. It is something that took place just a few months ago.