Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois has been saying for some months now that the government has not cleaned up its own backyard, but has just shovelled more than half of its cuts over into the provinces' backyards.
The cat was let out of the bag, recently, and not just any cat. The President of the Treasury Board was forced to admit in front of a committee of the other House, with all of his habitual candour, that the government would meet fewer than half of the commitments contained in the 1995 budget when it came to reducing the expenditures of federal departments.
My question is for the President of the Treasury Board. Does he finally acknowledge that, based on his own statement that the federal departments' expenditures would be reduced by 9 per cent over three years, instead of 19 per cent as promised, it is the provinces which have done most of the work and have absorbed more than half of his government's cuts through this nice little dumping exercise?