Mr. Speaker, I too rise to speak in support of the Bloc Québécois motion denouncing the efforts of the Conservative government, with the traditional complicity of the Liberals, to invade an area of Quebec jurisdiction by establishing a Canadian securities commission that would deprive Quebec of its powers over the area.
I would like to begin with a slight aside. People listening to us or reading our debates may find that the securities commission issue is quite boring and unimportant, given the difficulties we are currently facing. They may believe that it is not a major issue. I would like to tell them that, in my view, such is not the case, quite the contrary. I can concede that it may be boring, but that does not mean that it is not extremely important and pivotal.
Everything about this commission has very much to do with issues in the world of finance and the place where that financial sector is to be located. The question before us today is whether we agree that most, if not all, of the financial sector should be moved to Toronto. That is what this government really wants. Recently, we have seen that this government has no support. Its proposal has been almost universally condemned in Quebec. International organizations that have studied different systems show that the Canadian system works very well. The government has told us about cases of fraud. This is clearly nothing more than a red herring, a smokescreen. It has nothing to do with the matter. The reality is that they want to concentrate the financial system in Toronto, and that is extremely detrimental to Quebec.
We must look backwards. Before, during and after the Quiet Revolution, Quebeckers worked to free themselves from the English domination of their economy that existed at the time. Francophone Quebeckers, who made up the overwhelming majority of the population, saw that the control of the economy was entirely out of their hands. They had no control over it, and a tiny minority had its hands on all the levers. For decades, the Quebec people and their government have worked to change things.
I really liked Jacques Parizeau's explanation. He said that the Quebec government, when it was looking for funding, thought it was humiliating to have to beg for money from the Canadian financial community and be turned down. It then had to turn to the United States for capital.
Today, Quebec has strong, effective, useful and modern tools. It has come a long way. But we have noticed in recent years that it has started to slip. Montreal has already lost its stock exchange. The derivatives exchange is still there. Now, the federal government wants to pull out everything that is related to securities and move it to Toronto.
Obviously, that has significant consequences. The companies negotiating with the commission in Toronto will have to do so in English. We can see that this will be more complicated. Right now, if we want to meet with someone, we can take public transportation or our own vehicles and we can go to the Autorité des marchés financiers. We can have a meeting that way. But, if it is in Toronto, we would have to take the plane. It would be a bit more complicated. This process has started. Today, we have a federal government that wants to weaken Quebec's financial world.
Ultimately, we could understand them and see where their interests lie. What is more disappointing is seeing servile Quebeckers supporting them, sometimes even enthusiastically. We saw someone this morning laughing out loud at the comments of his ministers from the rest of Canada and taking pleasure in this weakening of Quebec.
We have a long list of people, and a coalition was even formed to denounce the government's plan. Here are some of the members of the coalition against the federal securities regulation plan: the Association de l’exploration minière du Québec, the Barreau du Québec, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Cascades, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, the Chambre de commerce de Québec, the Chambre des notaires du Québec, the Chambre de la sécurité financière, the Quebec Employers' Council. They are not bearded socialists, communists or separatists.
There are also the Fédération des Chambres de commerce du Québec, Fondaction, the QFL Solidarity Fund, the Groupe Jean Coutu, the Institut sur la gouvernance d’organisations privées et publiques, the Institut québécois de planification financière, Jacques Saint-Pierre, who is a professor at Université Laval, Jean La Couture, Corporate Director and Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Regroupement des assureurs de personnes à charte du Québec, Jean-Marc Fortier, partner at Robinson Sheppard Shapiro, La Capitale Financial Group, Pierre Lortie, former chair of the Montreal Stock Exchange, Quebecor, the SSQ, the Société d’assurance-vie, the City of Montreal and the City of Quebec. We also heard from the media that Power Corporation and Desjardins are against this plan. All Quebec Inc. is.
In the National Assembly, the consensus is extremely strong. The four parties, from those on the far left to those on the far right, from the most federalist to the most sovereignist, all agree that this scheme is unacceptable. Unfortunately, 25 Quebeckers are defending the indefensible. There are only about 25 of them in Quebec, and they are in this House. These are the servile Quebeckers in the Conservative and Liberal Parties who are neither able nor willing, as we in the Bloc Québécois are, to work for consensus in Quebec, to defend it and to bring it to this House.
Some members of this House are not part of this fight. We were even criticized this morning for putting the securities commission on the agenda again. We were told that we were going to lose again. But we will not give up.
It is like the battle for nationhood; motions to recognize the Quebec nation were introduced in this House numerous times, and we finally won. We are going to continue to fight because we are neither servile nor submissive. We are here to defend the strong Quebec consensus, and we will continue to do so.
The government likes to think that we will fail again. If we do fail again, it will demonstrate the limits of federalism and the dead end that Quebeckers see it as. When we have an institution that is clearly in Quebec's jurisdiction, and we have to fight, not in order to make headway in Canada, but in order to not be pushed back, that shows that the best Canada can offer us is to not lose ground.
There are Quebec members of this Parliament who, servile federalists that they are, are going to defend the indefensible in the face of everything that is being done economically, politically and socially in Quebec. This shows that Quebec has no future in Canada and that, in the end, the solution for Quebeckers is to take the plunge, to decide on our collective future and to become a country, a sovereign Quebec.
Until that time, until such time as Quebeckers make that democratic choice, the Bloc Québécois is going to continue working passionately to defend the interests of Quebec, even if that annoys the Conservatives, and the Liberal members from Quebec.