Mr. Speaker, if I were not sitting in my place watching the member, I might have thought it was the interim leader of the New Democratic Party who was speaking at times. I understand and appreciate that the Conservatives have really lost touch with this particular issue.
When we think about it, the member said that his problem is that the government would be contributing to the bank. By doing that it would be enabling other stakeholders such as, let us say, the City of Edmonton, or the City of Calgary, some of those great western cities, to look at it and say that maybe if they could get some assistance they could pool in some money, and yes, there might be a component for some private investment. As my colleague pointed out, much of that money that would go in there would be from pension funds. Some of those pension funds, if they were not going to be invested, let us say, in this future bank, would in fact continue to leave Canada. Many Canadians would benefit by this investment bank and the member needs to acknowledge that.
The member is wrong in trying to imply that there is no role for government to play when it comes to leveraging additional private dollars in order to get a project up and running. The Conservative Party might want to rethink its position, because I would have thought it would be supportive of a policy of this nature.