Mr. Speaker, my answer is that, ultimately, it is just their lust for power. It is quite natural for people who have power to want more of it. That is the reason for the federal government’s constant intrusions into jurisdictions that are not its own.
To simplify and perhaps boil down this concept of the spending power, I want to give two examples. The Constitution assigns education to the provincial governments and the Government of Quebec. Therefore, the federal government does not have the right to, for example, build a university, hire professors and so forth. In actual fact, though, what it does is offer the universities money to organize education in a particular way. It does not pass any legislation. It does not say they have to because it has the power. It does not do that. It does not pass any laws ordering them to do anything in particular. It offers money, and if a university wants the cash, it has to accept the conditions. There is a conditional aspect, therefore, to the spending power, and that is how they force educators in Quebec, for example, to follow federal directives.