Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain for his question. He talked about a consensus in Quebec. Personally I believe that there is a consensus throughout Canada that the federal government should exercise its spending power responsibly. As I mentioned earlier, it should do so especially in areas exclusively under provincial jurisdiction.
We can say without any hesitation that the federal spending power must indeed be limited. However, we believe that the best way to do this is under the social union framework agreement that was negotiated by our leader when he was Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
The Bloc would simply eliminate the federal spending power in Quebec—even though we believe it is essential to our country's economic and social progress—and replace it with the transfer of tax points to the Quebec government. However, that would lead to serious inequities for provinces such as mine, New Brunswick. A tax point is worth more in some provinces than in others.
We find this proposal from the Bloc irresponsible. The simple fact of claiming that it is possible to solve this issue without creating jurisdictional conflicts does not seem responsible to us.