Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his remarks. If I was not clear enough, let me add a couple of words to make myself perfectly clear this time.
My message to the Minister of Finance is as follows. First, he must not target those members of our society who are having the worst possible time right now, I mean the unemployed actively looking for a job; and the majority, the vast majority of them are actively looking for a job.
Second, he must not target the people on welfare, through cuts to the Canada Assistance Plan, and other transfer and equalization payments aimed at improving the fiscal situation of the provinces.
Also, I ask him not to cut those transfer payments to the provinces, as a whole, since, in the end, there is only one taxpayer.
Furthermore, I am ask him to spare those who have been paying taxes, carrying an ever increasing burden since 1984, and who are fed up; I mean the middle-income earners. That is essentially the first message I wanted to convey.
The second one is that he should tackle the real problems, the tax loopholes. I mentioned a whole series of them, I could have added more to the list; in fact, there are many studies, albeit incomplete, to back me up. The studies are there but the extent of the problem regarding tax loopholes, especially family trusts, is not fully known.
It has been said, and this is not out of line, that a minimum of $350 million is involved here. It might require the House to unanimously give the Auditor General a mandate, well within his authority, to conduct an in-depth study of tax havens, family trusts and the like. That would be the only way. That study should be an integral part of the proceedings of the ad hoc parliamentary committee the Minister of Finance has been asked to set up. He would then combine that study with the Auditor General's report and the committee's democratic proceedings. That is the first part of my message.
The second one, Mr. Speaker, is that the ball-I am referring to sovereignty versus federalism-the ball is going to be in my colleague's court and in his federalist colleagues'court, during the next provincial election, but most of all, during the ensuing referendum debate. In the last five years, there has been no proof, on the contrary, that the system can be changed to respond to Quebec's aspirations.
So, I will ask my colleague to conserve his energy because in the upcoming debate he will need all of it to demonstrate that the system can meet Quebec's expectations and that it can foster economic development and take up the many challenges we face in a global economy.