Mr. Speaker, I thank the NDP member for his question. We keep coming back to the same thing: fiscal imbalance.
Yes, transfer payments have been cut to Quebec, as government transfers to the provinces have been cut.
It is easy to be arrogant when one's pockets are full of money stolen from others, money that one has appropriated, when there is a duty under the Canadian Constitution to redistribute tax transfers to the provinces for normal needs in areas of jurisdiction that do not belong to us. But that duty has not been met. It is all very fine to pat oneself on the back, but I would not like to be in his place and to be patting myself on the back over this.
The government is here, not to manage Canada like a private business, but to meet the needs of the taxpayers. And this government is not doing so.