Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood for his speech, because finally he got into the substantive issue.
The people of Quebec all know what is in this bill; for 25 years, we in Quebec have been debating this situation of money from the federal government that fluctuates from year to year. For us the time for plumbers is over; for us now is the time for architects.
We do not care that you wanted to give us fish with a law like that. We want to be able to fish. What we want is to control things ourselves and have a free hand to run our own show. For that, what is most important to us is to have a government that raises taxes giving services to the people for the taxes it raises.
Now, because of the problem with Canadian federalism, to begin with, whereby the federal government has the right to raise taxes in areas it does not control, we have this fantastically hypocritical situation where the federal government says that it is giving us money back. It is not giving us money back; it is collecting our taxes and distributing them differently and for 125 years we have fought it because it never suited us.
That is why we in Quebec decided that there was no longer any point in coming here to fight with federalist members. Thus Quebecers elected sovereigntists because, as I was just saying, they no longer want to change the plumbing; they want to change house.
What I also wanted to tell you is that there are still problems with this bill, because from the time a ceiling was set, the following perverse effect has been created: Quebec's payment is 60 per cent of what it would be without the ceiling. When the federal government was run without the present level of deficits, we could afford this reduction, setting aside the basic problem with the federal system.
Since the federal government has no more money because it mismanages ours, not only Quebecers' money but that of all Canadians, it set a ceiling. With the ceiling, Quebec's share is decreasing systematically.
I quite agree with what the hon. member said about Richard Séguin-I know him well, and also his twin sister, who is a great singer; they are about my age and we have the same dream-we want to control our means of development so that our future can turn out as we want.