Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak. As the hon. member for Lévis pointed out earlier, the federal government has cut transfers to the provinces while claiming this would give the provinces more flexibility to manage their own affairs.
I myself have never seen a government cut funding to the provinces while claiming that such a reduction would give them more flexibility to manage the departments in question. As the hon. member for Lévis explained, the federal government gradually increased its interference by setting national standards, which it has finally realized are excessively costly to
implement. As has been demonstrated, the federal government's accumulated debt now amounts to $600 billion.
Now that the federal government has realized that the standards it has put in place in the last 20 years cost too much, it says it will now transfer responsibility to the provinces by reducing funding. Let me give you an example. When the Quebec government decided to establish its own health care system, the federal government was not very happy about it given its strong desire to impose national standards. The federal government tried to use that opportunity to impose national standards. Quebec and another province were then adamantly opposed to federal interference in health care. However, the federal government insisted and the provinces backed down, provided that it return 50 per cent of health care expenditures.
The federal government is now contributing around 30 per cent, while the provinces must make up the remaining 70 per cent. The federal government is still aying that federal standards must be maintained. This puts the provinces, especially Quebec, in a tight spot as far as health care spending is concerned. They cannot manage health care as they see fit, because they must comply with national standards while the federal government slashes health care funding in Quebec.
That is all I wanted to tell my fellow citizens in Longueuil and throughout Quebec. I wanted to inform them that the federal government is preventing us from managing health care properly. I ask the hon. member for Lévis whether he agrees with everything I just said.