Mr. Speaker, as you know, I asked two questions here this week about the government's actions in response to the ongoing crisis in New Brunswick and on the Acadian peninsula in particular and what it is doing for the victims of last week's ice storm crisis.

Unfortunately, I have to say that the answers I got from both the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness were not satisfactory with respect to the federal government's action, or rather the lack of inaction I was hoping for, in response to a situation that affected more than 130,000 households and left more than 10,000 of them without heat or electricity in February.

This situation really hits home for me because I was in Montreal in 1998 during the ice storm. It was not as bad for me personally because we were lucky to have been heating with gas, not electricity, but we took in many stricken Montrealers and gave them shelter for 10 days.

We see everything that the Province of New Brunswick is trying to do at this time, as well as what the victims are going through, but unfortunately, we have no idea what exactly the federal government has done, apart from responding to a request made last Friday to deploy some troops to the Acadian peninsula, specifically to Shippagan, Miscou and Lamèque.

In that sense, I believe we need to have an emergency debate on this matter, so that we, as parliamentarians, can learn more about what action this government has taken, what it has committed to doing, and the work it has already done, in partnership with New Brunswick, for the victims in that province. Those people need to know what the federal government has done for them, especially if you consider the federal government's rapid response to the Fort McMurray fires and the floods in Calgary and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, three disasters that have happened in the past five years.

In that sense, Mr. Speaker, I respectfully ask that you grant my request for an emergency debate, so that the House can debate this extremely important and urgent matter.

Guy Caron

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