Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Montmorency-Beauport-Orléans for his question. He said: "What if we lowered transfer payments", but this is no longer hypothetical. It is a fact, unfortunately. This is what has been happening for 10 years, and we can see the results. We do not have to figure out what is going to happen, we just have to observe.
In fact, health care is less accessible than it was. Hospitals in Quebec, like hospitals in other provinces faced with the same problems and resorting to the same expedients, are selling their laboratory services -I read that recently, perhaps you did too-to the private sector in order to get cash to be able to provide services to people.
You have to understand that if hospitals have to provide services without having the funds to do so, they have to find solutions that I would say are creative, although they are, in a way, creating a two-tier system of health care, whereby those who can afford it get the results of their tests fast, while others have to wait for them.
This is unfortunate, but it is the visible, clear and immediate result of the cuts made over the last 10 years or so. Will things change? I dare think they will. Excuse me, Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have left? About a minute, two minutes. I just want to say one more thing, Mr. Speaker. The money the federal government is transferring to each of the provinces is not its own money. It is money coming from taxpayers from all provinces.
Here we have money from taxpayer Joseph Latrémouille, or Joe Blow in the English provinces, that is going to Ottawa. Ottawa gets a certain amount. There is a return trip to the province of origin, this is the transfer payment. However, Ottawa does not return the full amount, it keeps some to cover its administrative costs.
Would it not make more economical sense, Mr. Speaker-I am not asking you, of course-for the taxpayer to send that money directly to his provincial capital, in our case Quebec City? Would it not entail substantial savings in administrative costs? I believe that to ask the question is to give the answer, and the recipe of sovereignty for Quebec might not apply to Quebec only. Perhaps some other provinces could feel the same way.