Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend from Repentigny for her comments.
Ottawa has been going down this road for years now. It is building itself up into an increasingly central power that looks less and less like a federation where Quebec can exercise a certain degree of autonomy.
Some time ago, Anglo-Canadian activist Naomi Klein pointed out in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, that those in power often use crises as an opportunity to shape policy.
This budget is an excellent illustration of that. In this 739-page document, the government sets out a framework for making all the decisions about what can be spent in areas under provincial jurisdiction even though it knows that the provinces will continue to suffocate if Ottawa refuses to increase health transfers. All of the pieces are in place to transform the federation into a very centralized state.