Mr. Speaker, I hope I have 20 minutes or so to respond, because it is not often that one hears such utter nonsense.
As far as the unitary state is concerned, yes we are heading more and more in that direction, and I trust the hon. member for Durham is listening. His government has implemented what is called the social union. What does social union mean? That the federal government can, merely by notifying the provinces—this is also going to interest my colleague from Anjou Rivière-des-Prairies—interfere in any provincial area of jurisdiction. What is that all about? Is this still federalism? According to what I learned in my law courses, any federalism requires totally different “spheres of sovereignty” for the different levels of government.
When the federal government gives itself the right and the power to interfere in areas of jurisdiction that do not belong to it, this is no longer federalism, and Canada is moving more and more toward a system in which Ottawa dictates to the provinces.
Nine out of ten provinces are relatively okay with that having signed the social union. Why? Because for them the “national government” is located in Ottawa. For them the supreme representative of their interests is in Ottawa.
For Quebecers, however, whether federalists or sovereignists, their national government is in Quebec City. This is why the three political parties represented in the National Assembly, including the strongly federalist Quebec Liberals, refuse to get involved in such a system, and reject the social union proposed by their federal cousins, rightly so, moreover.
There is one other thing that the hon. member referred to, and I am not sure I grasped it properly. He talked about occupying tax fields, wondering, I think, whether the trend that has existed since 1960 had to be reversed.
The transfer of tax points essentially stopped in the 1960s, unless I am mistaken, after another Liberal government, under Pierre Trudeau, decided to take a harder federal line and to centralize Canada increasingly rather than remain flexible. Flexible federalism does not exist in Canada.
With surpluses estimated at $137 billion, the provinces have the need, and the federal government has the money. The federal government is very tight with its money, because it refuses to give back to the provinces what it took from them, while the provinces' needs in health care continue to grow, as my colleague from Québec among others pointed out a little earlier.
As I said earlier, I think rightly, the federal government is keeping the provinces struggling, their heads barely above water, while it is rolling indecently and disgustingly in surpluses.