Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. I would simply like to add to the comments of my eloquent colleague, who clearly, has done a fair analysis of the budget situation. I would like to add, on the matter of national standards, as I mentioned earlier, that the Minister of Finance created a new transfer in the budget to be called the Canada social transfer.
The opposition is saying that again we are setting national standards for the Canada social transfer. I see nothing wrong in setting national standards. The problem with national standards-and again the opposition is trying to doctor the truth-is that, in the past, the standards were set unilaterally by the federal government. Now what we are saying, and it is in black and white in the budget, is that we are inviting all of the provinces to work together to set national standards jointly and in a spirit of co-operation.
This is the new Canadian federalism, flexible federalism, co-operative federalism. We are not trying to hide the truth or use some form of trickery to take away what is in fact in the budget and what was requested by all of the provinces.