Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very pertinent question. I would have also liked to hear her talk about the reality of her constituents as a result of the federal government's cuts to health care funding over the past number of years and decades.
Before I move on to give specific examples, I would like to remind her of the excellent book entitled Combating Poverty: Quebec's Pursuit of a Distinctive Welfare State, which shows how the cuts made to health care in the 1990s—and maintained since—have increased poverty and hardship, particularly for families, single-parent mothers and seniors.
That is unacceptable. The situation is not as bad in Quebec because the Quebec government implemented, with half the funding, certain measures, such as pharmacare, which of course is not perfect, the Quebec parental insurance plan, and subsidized early childhood and day care centres.
I am also thinking of the people in my riding who live in long-term care facilities. They are going through a horrific and unacceptable situation, right out of the dark ages. There is a direct correlation between their situation and the major cuts that Ottawa has been making over the past 25 years, and this government never did anything to remedy that.