Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to speak in the House today about the Bloc Québécois motion concerning a national regulator. Earlier, a Bloc member said that there was only one party in the House of Commons defending the interests of Quebeckers. Unfortunately, I completely disagree. Obviously there is a party in this corner, the NDP, that defends Quebeckers, the working families of Quebec, just as it defends the interests of all Canadians. Also, it is not true to say that only the Bloc speaks on behalf of Quebeckers. The NDP also defends the interests of real people in Quebec.
I am taking into account the interests of ordinary people across the country as I speak to this Bloc Québécois motion. We have a problem with this Conservative government. We are the only party that has always been opposed to this Conservative government's program. First the Bloc Québécois supported the Conservative Party for a year and a half. Then, after the byelections last summer, it realized that it was not in the best interest of Quebec to do that, so it changed course. Now, it is siding more with the NDP. We are very pleased that the Bloc Québécois has recognized the NDP's leadership. Now the Liberal Party is defending and supporting the Conservatives' program.
We do not agree with the government's approach. When the government talks about creating a common securities regulator, it is trying to go beyond the regulation we should have across Canada to protect ordinary people from corporate fraud.
We know full well that in Quebec this system works well. We recently saw the trial of Vincent Lacroix. Quebec already has a serious system that can bring people to trail and sentence them for committing securities fraud.
Our problem is that we cannot trust this Conservative government. Two years ago, it took over power from the Liberal Party, which was involved in a number of scandals, as we know. Since the Conservatives have been in power, they have not taken any effective measures, they have not taken any measures to have a healthy system that protects Canadians. Our former finance critic spoke many times in this House about the Conservative Party's lack of commitment.
When the Minister of Finance talks about implementing a national securities regulatory mechanism, we do not trust him. The reason is simple: for two years we have been listening to the Conservative government talk out of both sides of its mouth. We heard this in matters of international trade, an area I am quite familiar with. We heard this in the softwood lumber issue. The government said it would do something in the interest of the softwood lumber sector across the country. Instead, it put a softwood lumber agreement in place that has cost 10,000 jobs across the country so far.
We also hear this double talk from the Conservative Party concerning NAFTA. They said they had no desire at all to renegotiate NAFTA, but then we clearly heard the Minister of International Trade speak openly with members of the U.S. Congress and say that he was quite willing to renegotiate NAFTA.
We hear this double talk not only in the area of international trade, but also in the budgets presented by this Conservative government. Every time, the Conservatives make it a priority to lower taxes for big business.
The Conservative government is now talking about establishing sound securities regulations for the entire country. Oh, sure. It has no credibility in this matter. It has not shown the least bit of interest in establishing a protective system or measures that would reduce the current amount of securities fraud. I will come back to this, because it is very important. The problem remains that the Conservative government cannot be trusted in this area. That is very clear. It did not take any of the steps that it should have taken and did not do its job. That is the main reason we will support this motion.
We will support it for another reason, and that is the principle of cooperation among the provinces and the federal government. This Conservative government rarely talks about it, but certain regions of this country, such as Quebec and Manitoba, have taken steps in the area of securities. At the same time, the federal government is not showing any desire to cooperate, discuss or negotiate in order to create a system. Unless we have an effective system, based on negotiations and cooperative federalism, Ottawa will always dictate what happens.
For these reasons, we cannot support the federal government's approach because it does not have credibility and it did not hold the usual discussions for a change of this nature.
I would like to go back to the Quebec system for a few moments. The National Assembly of Quebec clearly stated that this Conservative government's idea is not a good one. In this area, Quebec has clearly put in place a regulatory system that is more advanced than those found in some other Canadian regions. We should examine what works in the Quebec system and the possibility of implementing it in other regions.
The government chose not to do that. Following the Vincent Lacroix trial, it did not take note of how well the system works and it did not consider how to put such an efficient system in place elsewhere. It did not do that. It said that it would be the one to decide, even though this Conservative government does not have any credibility in this field.
A corrupt Liberal government was replaced by a Conservative government that promised to do better. However, particularly in recent months, we have been treated to the same types of scandals we saw under the former Liberal government. Nothing has changed. We now have the Cadman affair and NAFTAgate, the repercussions of which will be felt beyond our Canadian borders. Last week I was in Washington and people were talking about how that deliberate leak of information was totally unacceptable. This is another Conservative Party scandal.
I do not have the 60 pages of notes on the many Conservative scandals, but one example is the Elections Canada scandal where they tried to deliberately get around Elections Canada's rules to spend more than the legislated maximum amount.
Once again, in light of all of these scandals, can we trust the Conservative government when it comes to securities? I think not. Obviously, we cannot trust the government.
Those are all of the problems related to this issue. The Conservative government lacks credibility and, for the past two years, it has been behaving just like the former Liberal government. Nothing has changed. I bet that when the Liberals come back here—they are not here today—they will—