Mr. Speaker, it is a bit difficult to respond to something so fundamental to someone who has announced that he no longer believes in the importance of his work here and is going to leave. If he actually thought that was important, he might have taken the many years that he was here to fight for that.
Those of us who understand the importance of these institutions will continue to fight for them. We will continue to fight for them despite what the Reform Party and the people who represented it used to say. We will continue to fight against the Conservative Party and its continual attempts to undermine the importance of this institution.
I wish my colleague well in the new career that he will follow once he leaves politics. But those of us who intend to maintain our belief that these institutions have to be defended will continue to work on concrete proposals like the one before us.
With regard to his parting words on our democratic institutions, it would have been far more interesting for us to hear him give meaning to his recognition of the fact that the Québécois constitute a nation within Canada. It would have been far more interesting to see him stand up and vote with us instead of staying there with his party and voting against us.