These are the questions that Quebekers ask themselves and which they will soon be able to answer, among others, during a referendum on Quebec's political future.
In the meantime, the government could have made the best of it and done something significant to prove its good faith concerning what it calls national reconciliation. For all provinces and especially Quebec, jurisdiction over cultural matters is of the utmost importance. Their numerous demands in that sense have always been rejected. For sure, the goal here is not only to put an end to the waste generated by overlap, but also to ensure cultural survival and development. And judging by this bill, the government apparently failed to understand this.
Last week, the finance minister said that we were in hock and that we could not go on like this. According to him, the economic situation of this country is unbearable. One reason for this unbearable situation remains that the Canadian government uses its spending power indiscriminately in areas under provincial jurisdiction. It insists on controlling everything whatever the cost. Well, the cost is unbearable. This is what we have been saying in this House, but to no avail.
With the government threatening to cut social programs by several billion dollars, what is even more unbearable is that the Canadian government has clearly indicated in Bill C-53 that it wishes to impinge on yet another provincial jurisdiction and to ignore every primary rule of productivity and overspend. This is why this bill also appears unbearable to me.