Mr. Speaker, we see that Quebec is not alone in its concerns about this issue. The advantage of having a system where each province has its own regulatory authority, its own authority issuing passports so that people can move from one authority to another, is that the different authorities can take account of their particular reality.
One does not need two postdoctorates in finance or economics to understand that the economic structure of Alberta is not the same as that of Prince Edward Island or Quebec. That is why the current system is much more flexible and why many other provinces want to keep their system. For Quebec this is even more important. It is not just a matter of economic structure, but also of culture, language, and our capacity as a nation to have access to the economic levers that allow us to develop.
It is a little pathetic to see the government having to invoke the cases of Earl Jones or other fraud artists to justify its commission. It is as if I were to say that there are lots of murders in Canada and that proves that the Criminal Code should not be a federal responsibility. There is lots of speeding on our roads, but that is no reason to transfer the highway safety code to the federal government. Just because the system is not perfect and we are not able to catch every single case does not mean we must transfer the responsibility to someone else. We must leave that sort of logic behind and get serious.
The cases that have been submitted in the House, notably that of Earl Jones, concern people who were not even registered with the Autorité des marchés financiers du Québec. Even if we had an intergalactic securities commission, if those swindlers were not registered they still would not have been caught, and people would still have been duped.
We have to remain reasonable and take this seriously. The issue before us today is whether we should allow Quebec, and surely other provinces, to be stripped of a good part of its financial community for the benefit of Toronto.