Mr. Speaker, the member for Longueuil is stuck on inflation rates of 14 or 15 per cent. Those were times I hardly knew. In those days, I was probably not even in the labour force, I have been working for only 25 years.
It is incredible how the problems of Montreal are being blamed on the inflation in the early eighties, at a time when we all know that governments had a different philosophy on the issue. The same was true of the Quebec government to which you were very close then, in 1980-81.
We should focus our debate on the Montreal of today, not the Montreal the member for Rosemont talked about, when it was mostly English speaking and seemed to be mean to us, not the Montreal of the late seventies when the inflation was sky high. I will point out that the inflation was the same in Toronto and the rest of Canada. It would appear that Montreal was affected in a different way. So here are a few things that are true. It was certainly not because of an anti-Quebec approach that inflation rates were so high, as a matter of fact, they were too high for Canadians as a whole.
These people should be reminded that for the past three years the inflation rate has been below 2 per cent; right now it is around 1.3 or 1.4 per cent. It is extraordinary to have been able to wrestle the inflation to the ground as we have done under the current Liberal government headed by the current Prime Minister, whom I cannot call by name in this House, although I nearly did, the member for Shawinigan.
Also, our interest rates are the lowest they have been in 38 years. You want to talk about the past? You are right, Mr. Speaker. I must address my remarks to the Chair. I want to point out that interest rates are the lowest they have been in 38 years. So those who cling to the past should also mention that.
I am more interested in the future, in the society we are building now. They speak about research and development spending. Quebec's part in federal spending for research and development has reached more than 25 per cent this year. We have made considerable progress.
But the interesting part are the tangible results of research and development. This is the area where we have progressed and where we are improving the situation. In the aerospace sector alone, the government will invest $2.3 billion over a ten-year period in Montreal. Those are structuring investments, considerably more important than what we have seen until now.
Then there are aeronautics, biotechnologies and the pharmaceutical industry. People keep asking: "When will you change the legislation?" Right now the legislation discriminates in favour of
the pharmaceutical industry in the greater Montreal. You are either in the past, or in an hypothetical future. We must remind these people that they should put an end to their qualms and their fears. We are trying to build a society and that can only be done on the basis of trust and confidence.
There were two major books written on economic development last year. I should send a copy to members of the opposition; they would be happy to see that Mr. Fukuyama, a very interesting Japanese-American sociologist, wrote a book in which he says that the societies which will perform the best in a global economy will be those where confidence prevails.
The title of his book is Trust . We must have confidence, we must stop being wary of what we see on the other side. Alain Peyrefitte said the same thing. He studied 400 years of economic development to see which societies performed. It was always the societies where there was confidence, the societies which-instead of turning against their Prime Minister, who is from Quebec, against a Prime Minister born in Quebec, the hon. member for Shawinigan who, faced with an urgent situation in Montreal, extended a hand to the Premier of Quebec-the societies which were united. For three days now he has been under attack. Everything he has done is being questioned.
You were right a while ago when you intervened to stop the use of the adjective, the use of the word hypocrite. Insult is the weapon of the weak, the weapon of those who have nothing to say. I will end on that. The situation is very serious in Montreal and we must unite, we must stop fighting each other and work together: the Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec, the municipal government, the private sector and the community. This is what we want and this is what we will do.
I would like to ask the opposition to stop slowing us down. Indeed, what they are trying to do, faced with the initiative taken by the Prime Minister of Canada at the beginning of the week, faced with this very constructive and positive speech, is slow down government action because it scares them.
