Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am anxious to put a question to the hon. member because I very seldom hear anything about rural communities in this House, particularly from that side.
The Eastern Quebec Development Bureau, as well as the operations Dignity, got started in our region 25 years ago. At the time, we worked very hard with people from various organizations. These were real people in that they took charge of their destiny. Twenty-five years later, I can see that the rural community is still in serious trouble.
Governments do not really seek to help us. I could talk about that for a long time. For example, we want to build a small slaughterhouse because we have to travel 100 kilometres to have our cattle slaughtered; we cannot do it locally, because federal standards force us to go elsewhere.
The Eastern Quebec Development Plan was abolished last year. That plan provided direct support to silviculture workers and helped land owners to get into forest management.
We also had, as everyone else in Canada, infrastructures. I want to put a question to the hon. member. In rural communities, what purpose did the infrastructure program serve, other than building sewers, sidewalks and roads? Such activities provide temporary employment, but they never create permanent jobs.