Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very good question.
As a former mayor, I would say that, if there was a minister able to help us develop our municipal projects in Quebec, it was the former minister of Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions. I am utterly convinced that the same goes for the five other economic development ministers across the country, such as the one from the Maritimes, who had to be very aware of the realities of the people in that region.
In fact, if we played a little game of “Reach for the Top” with our economic development minister, who is from Toronto, to ask him a few questions about various Quebec municipalities, I would be surprised if he knew where Kamouraska or Tingwick were, or if he understood the reality of our regions and our small and medium-sized municipalities, not just the major centres.
This is extremely unfortunate, because our regions have just had an extremely useful tool taken away from them, one that allowed them to look after their own economic development, which they are best able to do.