Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, and in particular for the quality of the examples she used, about the relevance of the passport system.
I think that it has been clearly demonstrated that the present system in Canada, with the jurisdiction within each province, works very well. The OECD ranks the Canadian system second in the world, and the World Bank also recognizes Canada as a world leader in this field.
Right now, we simply apply the constitutional powers as they exist. Thus, when the Government of Quebec clearly expresses its position through a motion adopted unanimously by the National Assembly and when its Minister of Finance writes to the federal Minister of Finance because she wants him to stop making plans to use the federal steamroller and to establish a single commission for Canada, it is quite convincing, given all this information, that the present system is adequate.
Can my colleague tell me if, in her view, it is understandable that the Conservative Minister of Finance, after recognizing the Quebec nation following the initiative from the Bloc Québécois, has this centralist attitude as if he were finance minister in a Pierre Trudeau Cabinet? Is this acceptable? How is it possible to explain this type of situation but by the fact that the federal machinery itself drives him to that conclusion?