Mr. Speaker, I draw the member's attention to page 354 of the budget. In it is a graph from the Department of Finance. It shows what we used to have in the country, the CAP, the Canada Assistance Program. We know what happened with that. If we look at that graph, it is very interesting. We know it was eviscerated by the previous government.
In that chart it also is important to know what the CAP meant. It meant we had a program that dealt with things like post-secondary education and health care. The previous government redesigned it, gave it a new envelope, a new name with less money it and said “Do whatever you want with it and we'll call it the social transfer”. What has happened is, we are in this game, this gambit, of handing over money without strings attached and saying we have solved the problem.
We had the disaster with the budget vis-à-vis Mr. Charest in Quebec. He talked about needing to rebuild the services in Quebec. He whined for a very long time about the need for money so he could reinvest in Quebec. Then he threw the money out in terms of a tax cut.
What does the member think about the opportunity the government is giving to rebuild social services in our country?