Madam Speaker, I listened to the former minister talk about the present finance minister who is facing a difficult situation in Quebec. Last week, I had the opportunity to remind the member opposite that a $19.3 billion transfer was unheard of. In the whole history of the Canadian federation, such a massive transfer from the federal government to a provincial government, in one lump sum, is a record amount of money. This is a way for my colleague from Hochelaga to support the Quebec government's efforts.
We know that the fiscal imbalance in Quebec started when the Bloc was first sent to Ottawa. That is no surprise. As Mario Dumont so ably put it in January 2006, how can Quebec come out ahead when a political party systematically uses Quebec's political weight to condemn the province to an opposition role forever? The answer is simple. Quebec is losing.
It is true that Quebec is losing with the Bloc, but fortunately, something happened in 2006. Quebeckers elected a good number of my Conservative colleagues, and we succeeded in correcting the fiscal imbalance in 406 days. Even the Bloc had to recognize that. Even the leader of the Bloc recognized it.
My question is this. Why refuse to transfer the billions of dollars that Quebec—