Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments made by my colleague from Quebec. She raised what I think is an extremely important point, which I would like her to develop further.
She talked about centralization and decentralization. We now see that the federal government, in particular the Department of Health, is trying to centralize a number of health matters, especially the general direction of health care in Canada.
At the same time, we see that the provinces, including Quebec, want to make innovative, creative decisions to better manage health care within their territories. In Quebec, there is a wide consensus to decentralize health care decisions to administrative regions. I am not talking about Canada's administrative regions but about administrative regions in Quebec. We see that the people want to be able to define in their own communities the kind of health care services they need and to have access to them.
This is in complete opposition to the tendency evident in the federal government's measures. Our concerns are justified. The federal government's centralizing vision is totally out of touch with the expectations of people in every province, including Quebec.
I would like the hon. member for Quebec to expand on this, to give the people listening to us and the members of this House an overview of Quebec's favoured approach, which seems to strike a chord in some other provinces.