Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve for this question. Indeed, as far as health is concerned, an approach cannot be taken that focusses solely on physical health, chronic disease, or so on. There must be an overall approach.
If people are poor, they eat badly. They have substandard housing. They have psychological problems. It all goes together. What I find so disturbing at the present time is that, where physical and psychological health are concerned, as well as social housing and poverty, this government has withdrawn its support to a shocking degree. That government over there, the Liberal government, and it has been that way since 1990.
This is all because of the power struggles and the fact that there is no uniformity across the country. There is no uniformity throughout all the regions of Quebec and Canada. A uniform system cannot be implemented in all the provinces.
The government over there, because of its refusal to recognize the specific nature of Quebec, first of all, or to leave certain of our powers with us, because of its desire to hold on to our money for us, so as to have a Canada that is coast to coast, because it wants to have a high international profile, is not prepared to take the interests of Quebec and the provinces into account.
That is what is happening with social housing. Quebec needs social housing. Housing is needed for single mothers with two, three or four children. Social housing is needed for seniors.
At the present time, the trend in other provinces is toward a lesser need for social housing. So we have heard this week from the Canadian Homebuilders Association. They say the need is less, but is a bit greater in Quebec.
Because of that very power struggle, and the fact that they want to keep the money that ought to be coming to us through the social transfer, we are indeed short of social housing in Quebec.
We also lack help with health care, because the government wants to latch onto the power to decide what it is going to do with the money, basically, while we in Quebec know what needs to be done. We know where our needs lie. We know what areas of health care we want to develop, but this government does not recognize that.