Mr. Speaker, the leader of the Parti Action Démocratique in Quebec had announced that his party would participate in the regional commissions by saying, and I quote: "We can only rejoice over the fact that our conditions have been agreed to. We are happy to contribute to an improvement of the process. We are taking a constructive approach. We hope that many people will take part in the consultation".
Three months later, he said and I quote: "I think that it is not necessarily clear in the minds of all the citizens who came to participate, because if they had been told at the beginning of the consultation that they were wasting their time and that everything had been decided in advance, there might not have been 55,000 participants". The leader of the Parti Action Démocratique is experiencing a rude political awakening. He has realized, but too late, that he has been manipulated by the Parti Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois.