Madam Speaker, I am also pleased to recognize the work and accomplishments of the member for Haldimand—Norfolk.

She has been a member of the House since June 2004. Today, I understand her decision to leave us. She has served the public, served others, for over 16 years. She can be proud of what she has accomplished. If I were her, I would be proud too.

I met my colleague in 2006, when I was the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry and she was a minister. As members have said, she has held a number of cabinet positions. What stands out about her to me is her kindness. She was the kind of minister who was not intimidating at all, so opposition members were not too shy to cross the floor of the House to talk to her about specific files. She was always friendly and attentive to all members who had things they wanted to ask her about.

Today, she gave her speech mostly in English, but I know that Diane, if you will allow me to call her by her name, Madam Speaker, also speaks French and made every effort to do so. Every time I went over to talk to her, she made an effort to listen to me and answer me in my own language, both orally and in writing.

The public does not know that we exchange notes, that is, messages that the pages deliver to ministers. Every time that I, or any of my Bloc colleagues, sent her a written message about a specific matter, she always made sure to answer in French and, above all, to follow up the next day during question period. That is an admirable quality. She was an approachable, empathetic minister. She devoted herself to serving the people we represent. Being a government minister means being the minister of all citizens. She certainly took that to heart.

I also knew her during the period when she sat just over there and her eyes were hurting. She mentioned this in her speech. She stayed on, sitting there. Someone else might have gone on sick leave, but this MP and minister stayed on to carry out her duties while fighting an illness that I am happy to say she overcame.

I know that she never held a grudge against me for the time, right after I was elected in January 2006, when I showed up unannounced at her office with piles of shirts from textile workers. I had organized a big rally for textile workers, and Paul Crête and I went to her office to give her five or six garbage bags full of workers' shirts. She thought it was pretty strange that a young MP would come barging into her office like that to deliver shirts. However, she never held it against me, quite the contrary, in fact. As someone said before, she has a great sense of humour.

It means a lot to me that the person in the Chair today is a woman, because we welcomed two new female MPs yesterday, which enabled us to reach the magic number of 100 women in the House, out of 338 MPs. It is a magic number. I am sad to see Diane leaving us, because now the number could drop back to 99. I apologize, Madam Speaker. That said, I understand that she needs to take care of herself, her family and her children and take some time to just enjoy life, because it must be said that serving others and being an MP and minister for so long takes up a lot of time.

On behalf of the Bloc Québécois, I hope the next chapter of her life is filled with fun, love and success, and I hope she gets a chance to live life to the fullest.

Claude DeBellefeuille

$536,291.00