Mr. Speaker, that is what separates the Bloc Québécois from the NDP, even though our outlooks on social justice are quite similar. Nonetheless, in our opinion, the key players, the major stakeholders in finding solutions to these significant social problems are the provinces, Quebec in particular.
We want to have transfers without conditions. Obviously we would prefer to have equalization transfers, or money sent to the Government of Quebec so that it can assume its own responsibilities, including a certain number of the problems that have been raised.
For example, literacy is not a federal government responsibility. The federal government has a responsibility to transfer money to Quebec so that it can have suitable literacy programs. The federal government has a responsibility to literacy coalitions. That is why we criticized the last fall's program cuts of over a billion dollars.
We have to work on resolving the fiscal imbalance so that Quebec has all the means necessary to deal with the problems raised by the hon. member.
In that sense, we support the budget, even though the initial response is inadequate, as I have already explained. Nonetheless, it is by resolving the fiscal imbalance, by transferring the tax base revenues to Quebec—the provinces that want to benefit from this will follow suit—that Quebec will have the means to deal with all the problems she has raised.
Social programs, learning and literacy are not federal government responsibilities. The government's responsibility is to properly redistribute wealth across the Canadian political federation, which it still has not done.
In my opinion, this will never happen because the federal government, regardless of its political stripes, will always want to have a stranglehold. There is still the good old-fashioned idea that Ottawa knows best, when in fact it manages practically nothing as far as social programs are concerned.