Mr. Speaker, yesterday the president of the Quebec treasury board tabled the 1997-98 estimates. Next year, the province's health, education and social assistance expenditures will be cut by $1.6 billion.
For the same year, federal cash transfers to Quebec in these areas will be reduced by exactly the same amount as in 1996. The painful cuts now facing the Government of Quebec are, make no mistake, the sad result of decisions by Canada's finance minister and this Liberal government.
In making such cuts in the social transfers to the provinces, the federal Liberals are condemning them to paying the political price of improving federal public finances, all the while unfairly claiming credit for managing the country well.
The next election will provide an opportunity to remind Quebecers that the Liberal government must bear most of the blame for the closure of hospitals and cuts to education in Quebec.