Gilles Duceppe

[The Budget, January 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec is the big loser in this budget. The Prime Minister has totally ignored the needs of Quebec by turning his back on a unanimous motion by the National Assembly setting out the key demands of Quebec. Instead of helping Quebec, the Prime Minister has decided to deprive it of some major means of helping it cope with the crisis.

Will the Prime Minister admit that he preferred, for purely political reasons, to respond only to the demands of Ontario and the West and ignore those of Quebec?

[Finance, January 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, by capping equalization, the Prime Minister is taking over $1 billion away from Quebec, depriving it of a means of combatting the economic crisis. The Prime Minister prefers to help Ontario and the west, which benefit from the new equalization formula, at Quebec's expense.

How can we have confidence in this Prime Minister, who is going back on his March 19, 2007 commitment to the Premier of Quebec to make, and I quote, “a fundamental return to fiscal balance in Canada”?

[Finance, January 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion calling on the federal government to maintain the current equalization formula and opposing the proposed Canada-wide securities commission.

How can the Prime Minister, who recognized the Quebec nation, go against this unanimous motion by going ahead with an equalization ceiling and a single securities commission?

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

Everything is out in the open. We conveyed what the three parties in Quebec's National Assembly were asking for. But I want to get back to the July 2000 article in which the Minister of International Trade said that he was holding talks with Parti québécois officials and their supporters about alliances that could be established with the “evil separatists” in the upcoming election.

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, he has asked me some questions, so I will answer them. He is practising asking questions for when he finds himself on this side.

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

If they could stop yelling.

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the question is for me—

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, what is true is that the economic statement reduced the amount going to Quebec from $1 billion to $450 million.

I would like to ask the Minister of International Trade whether he recalls saying on July 29, 2000, that he was not opposed to a coalition with the Quebec separatist party, after the election, in order to ensure that the Conservatives' ideas could be advanced. This was a statement he made to journalists, some—

[The Conservative Government, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to understand this. The agreement has been released, it is public. But the Minister of Foreign Affairs has just said we have lost our veto power. Yet just a little while ago he said that the separatists have acquired a veto.

Might we know just which it is?

[The Economy, December 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, in the 2000 proposal, supported by the current Minister of International Trade, they were even prepared to discuss the contents of the throne speech with the leader of the Bloc Québécois in order to form, as they put it, a “new government of consensus”.

Will the Minister of International Trade admit that after the 2000 election he was ready to form a coalition government with the separatists—as they say—of the Bloc Québécois, and as the proposal made by his personal attorney, Mr. Chipeur, confirms?