Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Matapédia—Matane for his very pertinent question.
A few years ago, when the federal government began to back out of funding, we drew up a sort of balance sheet of what the impact on our communities was. If the federal government does not give money to the provinces, the provinces cannot give money to the municipalities, unless they make budget choices that have a negative impact on other areas of activity.
We came to realize that, ultimately, this situation led to the closure of nursing homes, to hospital bed shortages, and to less home care. These are services our people want, services they want to see delivered. As well, society has to meet the special costs involved in providing services to people in the more isolated areas.
The entire territory needs to be serviced. Each region of Quebec has its regional health administrations and these try to perform miracles with the money available to them, in order to deliver proper services.
We have become aware, however, that the lower federal contribution in recent years has ended up drastically reducing the funds available to the provinces, and in the end everyone has had to try to accomplish miracles. The very direct consequences of this have been that our small rural communities are losing residents, as people move to larger centres where they have access to services. I think that this is not a good thing for our communities in the medium and long term. Something needs to be done.
I would like to make it clear that Quebec is convinced that there is a fiscal imbalance. The three parties in the Quebec National Assembly, that is the Parti Quebecois, which forms the government, the Liberal Party of Quebec, which forms the official opposition, and the Action démocratique du Québec, are unanimous on this.
There are also 29 stakeholders from civil society who have taken collective action. According to them, there is only one defendable position in Quebec, which is that we are short of funds. The federal government, a government with a surplus, is the one that has control of those funds, and it is absolutely imperative that it distribute them to the provinces, to do away with the fiscal imbalance, which has such a negative impact on our health system.