Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's speech. He spoke about what it is to be a progressive.
I did find his description of Quebec society, though, to be very conservative. I see Quebec society as representing this kind of conservative preservative nationalism, a desire to preserve language, preserve identity, preserve culture. That is a Burkean vision of society that conservatives are very enthusiastic about: the desire to preserve the goods of history and pass them on untainted to the next generation. I would submit that to my colleague for his consideration, that conservative principles are very much aligned with Quebec's emphasis on culture and tradition.
I want to ask him about this idea of subsidiarity that he alluded to in his speech, the importance of bottom up instead of top down when it comes to social change and programs and these sorts of things. One of the challenges I have with the Bloc Québécois is that they quite rightly emphasize subsidiarity in the sense of respect for provincial jurisdiction, but we do not see the same respect for minorities within minorities, the recognition that, yes, the federal government must leave appropriate space to the provinces but provinces must also respect the proper space of minorities within those provinces in terms of the practice of their own traditions and so forth. I am curious to hear his comments on that.