Mr. Speaker, that is not an interpretation of what he said, but an interpretation of what we read. In 1995, the Minister of Finance was talking about a 19 per cent reduction in expenditures, and in the last three years his department has reduced its expenditures by only 9 per cent for this fiscal year. That is what we can conclude.
Now we have a better idea of why the Minister of Finance bought those work boots in 1994. It had nothing to do with creating jobs, it was to be properly dressed to operate a steam shovel for dumping the debt onto the provinces. That is the reality.
I am also asking the President of the Treasury Board whether he acknowledges that his government has acted as a poor manager and whether the Quebec government deficit forecast for this fiscal year would be 60 per cent lower without the federal government's drastic cuts in transfer payments to the provinces?