Mr. Speaker, what a great opportunity I am being given. Obviously, the Government of Quebec cannot provide all the benefits it would like to provide, because the priority is to deal with the fiscal imbalance.
For example, when the federal government invests $10 billion of the profits accumulated at the expense of taxpayers across Quebec and Canada, if this money were redistributed among the provinces, there is no doubt that the Government of Quebec would move forward on the issues of parental leave, child care centres and homelessness. In Quebec, we have very strong institutions and structured groups pressuring the government in the National Assembly. Antipoverty legislation was even passed, in spite of the fact that Quebec does not have all the tools required, as these include funding to meet expectations in Quebec.
When it comes to having good ideas, I think that ours must be very good, because they are being taken up in this House today. Ideas can be borrowed from other countries or people from elsewhere, the same way ideas can be borrowed from our friends opposite, provided that provincial jurisdictions are respected and that a fair distribution of taxation powers is restored across Canada. This would take care of a big problem. Perhaps we would not be here, considering the establishment of the new Department of Social Development. This department will be expensive to operate and, in the end, the expectations of the public will not be met.
In fact, the Auditor General referred to this extensively today in one of her criticisms. In her report, she deplores the raiding of the employment insurance fund, as well as the fact that government programs do not provide aboriginal people with access to post-secondary education, and the list goes on. The government has a lot of mea culpa to do with respect to its operations and what it has control over. Let it start by dealing with what is wrong in its own jurisdictions; then we will talk.