Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech.
I was pleased to hear him talk about our two counties because that is what the Bloc Québécois has been saying for a long time now, since our party was created.
That being said, I was surprised to hear him describe the post-World War I and post-World War II experience in a positive light. Ottawa took that opportunity to create taxes and resume taxation, which was supposed to be left to the provinces. That seems similar to what we are experiencing right now and it shows Ottawa's tendency to take over more and more powers every time there is a crisis. The federal government is launching a gluttonous operation to centralize power, just as we saw following the Patriotes' rebellion and the 1980 and 1995 referendums.
In the budget, the federal government infringes on the provinces' jurisdictions and is making funding cuts so that it does not have to increase health transfers. That means that the provincial governments' jurisdictions are getting smaller and smaller, and there provinces are now being reduced to mere administrators. That problem could have been remedied had the House adopted the Bloc Québécois's amendment to the amendment, which sought to increase health transfers.
The member voted in favour of our amendment to the amendment, and I thank him for that. Why did most of his colleagues, including his leader, vote against our amendment to the amendment?