Madam Speaker, I thank the Bloc Quebecois member for his question. I agree with him. This government does not have any priority; it is very wasteful in its spending.
As for health care, it is true that the government does not make it a priority to spend money for the benefit of the provinces.
I am in favour of one of the points raised by my Bloc colleague. As we see the health care debate erupting across the country, many provinces are discussing options on how they can take care of the health care problems that exist in the administration of health care in their provinces.
There has been widespread debate on how the provinces and the premiers will have to look for additional resources, seeing that much of those resources have been cut by the government over the years and that the amounts it has put back in past budgets have been very restricted.
On the one note, I agree with my colleague that we have to give the ability to the provinces to do the job effectively, to administer health care and to take care of the people in their provinces as effectively as they can. That requires flexibility.
In my home province there is an ongoing debate about the Mazankowski report that was tabled not too long ago. The province is looking at the options in that report and at how it can serve its public best. Given the crisis in health care and given the challenges the provincial governments are facing, we need to give them flexibility to do so.
At the same time it is a shame, as I said, that in the budget the government did not make transfers to the provinces a priority, especially in the area of health care. I dare say the crisis that is erupting across the country in various provinces clearly can be put on the shoulders of the government and its lack of attention to this file.