Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's overview with respect to the partnership fund. I appreciate also the thrust of his comments that the initiative taken by the Bloc with respect to the funding to bolster Kyoto strategies in the province of Quebec is worthy of support.
However, while my colleague has stated the broader context for the partnership fund very well, I would like to give him the opportunity to expand on that a little, because I am not sure the tremendous work that went into the partnership fund is fully understood by Canadians or even by members of the House.
To illustrate that, I would like to point out that budget 2005 had booked $250 million for those kinds of projects across the country, projects that would be partnerships between the federal and provincial governments. An additional $1 billion was in the green budget to expand upon that and we know that certainly did not go ahead. Also, it was evident that the province of Ontario was written to by the Minister of Finance to confirm that he was reneging on $5.6 billion in funding as part of the commitment of the Canada-Ontario agreement.
Does the member see that even to support the Quebec initiative is very, very far removed from both the spirit and the very comprehensive nature across this country of what that partnership fund was designed to do, which was, in a visionary way, to attempt to establish a very broad, sector by sector, province by province comprehensive strategy to get buy-in on a Kyoto strategy?
I would like the member to comment not only with respect to where he would like to see the support for Quebec, but also with respect to where he could see a real partnership fund progressing if it were within the context of the approach, both in spirit and in strategy, that had been put forward by the previous Liberal government.