I want to make the statement I have made very clear to the hon. member who raises the question. The purpose of Bill C-3, and I read this verbatim out of notes from our briefing, "is to enable provincial governments to provide their residents reasonably comparable levels of public service at reasonable levels of taxation".
In other words Bill C-3 creates a level playing field across Canada. This bill provides that we will bring the per capita payment up to the standard of $4,800. Now that does not bring it up to 100 per cent but it brings it from 85 per cent to 93 per cent in terms of comparability. A group of factors have been taken into consideration to bring about this standard and to do the best in comparability.
If we have equalized the opportunity for Canadians in whatever community they live, whether it is Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia or Alberta or wherever it is, we have equalized it by Bill C-3. That is the starting point. Any programs allocated after that should not require an equalization consideration.
For example, housing through RRAP and if everything is equal, if it is $10 per capita in Newfoundland, then it should be $10 per capita in Alberta and $10 per capita in British Columbia or Saskatchewan or Quebec so that we should not have to consider it as much. However as we observe the distribution of federal funds in a variety of programs, and we even note it in the infrastructure program, we built a factor into that program that said it was still not quite equal in some of the provinces and that we had to consider the unemployment factor so those provinces receive more per capita.
That is really saying that our equity considerations were not working and that we still have to work on them and shore them up. I am saying let us be careful so we do not overdo that in the programs we design from this period of time on and in the programs which will be introduced in the budget which is coming up in February 1994 as well.