Mr. Speaker, in fact there is something utterly inconsistent in this government policy. Let us say on the one hand that it is obviously not a gift. The Conservatives often portray the spending of our tax dollars as a gift. We often hear the Minister of Labour say that he has allocated and handed over x amount of money to such and such an organization and so forth.
The Minister of Labour needs to understand that it is not his money. I doubt he is earning enough as a minister to go around distributing millions of dollars out of his own pocket. The money obviously comes from Quebec taxpayers. The least the federal government could do is invest in Quebec infrastructures.
When the time comes to invest in structural initiatives, Quebec never gets its fair share of federal spending. Research centres are one example that springs to mind. If we look at the National Capital Region alone, there are dozens of centres—I cannot recall the exact number—but for purposes of comparison, the number is irrelevant. There are dozens of research centres on the Ottawa side, the Ontario side, but none on the Quebec side, not one research centre.
If we look at investment in different fields of research, fields that have productive benefits, Quebec is severely under-represented relative to its population and the taxes it sends to Ottawa.
In Mont Tremblant, there is investment in infrastructure. Great. That is a good thing, and there is nothing to criticize on that front. But the government must be consistent. If it believes in that airport, it cannot penalize it by treating it unfairly, by treating it in a way that is special but negative, extremely negative. The government should not freeze bank accounts or threaten to close such an important airport.
My colleague drew a very interesting parallel with Mirabel Airport, because Mirabel Airport was also something of a questionable political decision in its day. The subsequent decisions were equally questionable, that is, transferring everything to Dorval, which will soon reach its saturation point.
Our impression is that the federal government, Liberal or Conservative, favours Toronto as the hub of Canada’s airport system, to the exclusion of everyone else. In terms of airport policy, this government’s only thought is to support Toronto.
As for the rest, in Quebec, the decisions on Dorval and Mirabel were a fiasco across the board. We see it now, too, in the case of the Mont Tremblant airport. It is yet another discriminatory decision that is not in Quebec’s interest.
I hope that during the question and comments period the Conservatives will be able to tell me the name of this famous other airport that is being treated the same way, that is, getting regular commercial flights and having to pay charges.