Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his fine words.
I always find it strange to answer questions from my colleagues, but unlike what we see every day in question period, I can assure the House that we did not agree on the question in advance.
The government's centralizing tendency to always impose these types of conditions is real. It confirms that Canada is not a confederation or a sharing of certain interests, but an increasingly unilateral state. The evidence is that, any time the government sends the provinces a bit of money, it has to be on its terms. It has to impose standards and tell us which direction to take. I would like to remind members of what the constitutional expert that I quoted earlier said, and that is that the provinces are free as long as they follow the rules imposed on them.
How is there any flexibility or independence in that? I am still looking for the answer.