Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Manicouagan for his speech.
People always feel threatened by his razor-sharp mind. I found his perspective very interesting and would like to make a daring comparison. I hope he will forgive me.
As a result of my experience to date as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, I have detected a general trend, which is not exclusive to the Conservative government, towards offloading more and more responsibilities on putative grounds of economic realism and the need for budget cuts. This means that such responsibilities are transferred to other levels of government that could be described as lower.
As I was listening to my colleague’s speech, I was thinking that this was clearly one of the consequences, and that it was probably based on similar considerations. I would like to know what he thinks of it.
Is the federal government generally attempting to shirk its responsibilities?