Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Saint Boniface for representing very ably the views of people in the west and of the people of Manitoba regarding the C-17 contract.
I am old enough to remember the scandal surrounding the CF-18, at which time Winnipeg was the low bidder on the CF-18 maintenance contract. Brian Mulroney's government gave it to Quebec for purely political reasons even though Winnipeg was the low bid.
I serve notice right now and right here that we will never tolerate an insult like that again.We threw out Brian Mulroney. We rejected his entire government based on that. It became the turning point in western Canadian politics for a generation to come. We will not tolerate the humiliation and the insult that contract represented.
Now we are faced with the C-17. Reason seems to be prevailing that Manitoba will get its fair share of the maintenance of these aircraft. If we see this reason turning or shifting for pure political reasons to give this as a gift to Quebec yet again, a bribe or blackmail or whatever it is called, we will not tolerate it. We serve notice that we will rise up in the west just as they did during the 1990s and we will denounce the government if it weakens in its resolve. We demand our fair share of those jobs as determined by the industry and we insist on that--