Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the very day the budget was presented, the situation in the emergency rooms of certain hospitals was critical.
The Minister of Finance does not appear to listen to the news before he retires. If he did, he would not spend millions of dollars, when he prepares his budgets, on fattening up the mandarins of Health Canada and ordering empty studies on matters of no concern to him.
This House must realize that, with the hundreds of millions of dollars the federal government will be wasting in duplication and useless programs, such as telecare, the provinces could create hundreds of jobs and make available thousands of beds in emergency rooms so as to help the sick directly.
Let us remind the Minister of Finance that Internet does not attend to fractures, people do. No, the Minister of Finance did not listen to Canadians and Quebeckers in this budget. He tried instead to respond to the federal government's obsession with its own visibility.
It is sad to see that this budget marks the start of the ravages to the social union agreement that—