Madam Speaker, I greatly appreciated the presentation by the hon. member of the government party. I think he painted an interesting picture of the crisis in which the previous government had plunged the country for nine years, I would, however, like to have his reaction to or views on some of my concerns which he touched on.
Earlier on, we had the opportunity to discuss transfer payments. At that time, I expressed a number of reservations and received some answers.
Now we are looking at the issue of established programs financing. Regarding this matter, we know that if the trend continues, as the hon. member mentioned, then in a few years time, Quebec will no longer be receiving any funding at all. Eventually, a number of provinces would see their share also reduced to zero.
In 1977 the federal government made a commitment to the provinces in the area of established programs financing. At the time the commitment was based on the formula that the hon. member mentioned a while ago. On the strength of this commitment, each province set up its own health care and post-secondary education programs.
Over the past ten years or so, the government has gradually reneged on its commitments. At the same time the taxpayers in each province must continue to pay their full share of taxes. The money that the taxpayer was giving to Ottawa was not being reinvested in his or her province, as the federal government and the provinces had agreed it would be in the late 1970s.
Could we not call this a misappropriation of funds? I will ask the hon. member to comment on this point in a few minutes. The fact remains that under the present circumstances, this approach would seem to be the safer bet. I would like to repeat what the hon. member said.
We want to put a certainty into the EPFs. We do not have that at this stage and have not had it for the past 10 years.
The best guarantee we could have that the provinces are receiving their fair share is if the taxpayers in each provinces remit directly to the province, and Quebecers to Quebec, the money which is now sent directly to Ottawa and which is not fully reinvested, and less and less in each provincial health care system.
I will conclude with a question for the hon. member. Does he not think that each province should have exclusive jurisdiction over health care?