Mr. Speaker, I will resist the temptation to talk about whether the Bloc is as identical to the NDP as it sometimes claims.
I have made this argument before that its support of free trade agreements and other things like that in my view go against the interests of workers.
The nationalist movement in Quebec has always been a bit of an ideological grab bag. We know that. What unites it is its nationalism, in this case its view of the need for Quebec to separate from the rest of Canada. Having said that, I acknowledge there are many social Democrats in the Bloc Quebecois and we work with them when we can.
To the question was raised by the member, we are opposed to unilateral cutbacks by the federal government in federal transfers to the provinces in respect of provincial jurisdiction. That is why we would have been in favour of a Bloc motion that talked about arriving at a social union with respect to health care that prevented unilateral cutbacks by the federal government and that perhaps even talked about the mutual setting and enforcement of national standards. But there is nothing like that in the motion.
Instead the Bloc member did not say anything about the Canada Health Act. The member still did not talk about national standards pointing out, regrettably, the difference between ourselves and the Bloc when it comes to this question.
For us medicare and its preservation and the idea of national standards is a bottom line. That is all there is to it. Any motion which calls that into question is unsupportable.