I was as surprised as you to hear Mr. McCallum say that this budget needed to be adopted as a result of the economic crisis. A cooperation agreement was reached on December 1 between the Liberal Party and the NDP, supported by the Bloc Québécois. In our opinion, this agreement was a much better way to get out of the crisis than the current budget. There were other solutions than the budget.
Before the current economic crisis, there was an environmental crisis. The current budget allocates a lot of funding for infrastructure projects, and we recognize that this is good. However, we would have liked there to have been more money to develop green energy. The budget allocates $1 billion over five years, which is quite derisory if we compare that amount to the funds allocated to infrastructure.
I want to come back to the issue of equalization. Hydro One's profits are not coming from natural resources, but rather from corporate dividends, for example from energy transmission, but Hydro-Quebec is not getting the same treatment. This creates an inequity between Ontario and Quebec in this regard, all the more so because Quebec will experience significant cuts under equalization which was one of the things, if not the major element, that resulted from the partial resolution of the fiscal imbalance. We feel that this adds to Quebec's difficulties.