Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg St. James for his comments.
The hon. member made a terrible mistake. He discussed hockey in the middle of a political speech. Whenever we do that we run the risk that the conversation will quickly turn away from politics and stay strictly with hockey.
The NHL has a form of equalization. It has the annual draft which has the effect of redirecting players to teams that perform poorly and I should add, redirecting players away from the areas of the NHL to some of the smaller urban centres in Canada that produce a lot of the hockey talent. Arguably there is a form of equalization that is overequalization and quite detrimental in that case to our interests. It is somewhat like what the member for Lethbridge alluded to yesterday when he talked about overequalization in some of our programs here.
I would just like to ask the member for his comments on one question. I am curious about his perspective. Under equalization levels for this year, 1994-95, the per capita top up for the province of Manitoba is $849 and for the province of Saskatchewan $552, his province and the neighbouring province. This is a tremendous difference. I have looked at statistics from Statistics Canada and I see that Saskatchewan residents have a lower personal income per capita than Manitoba. This seems to me to be a bizarre result and one that is in favour of his province.
Does he think there are problems in the formula? Maybe some time down the road we should study the formula and come up with a more fair one that is easier for people to understand and a little more clear in the kinds of results it produces. I would be interested in his views on some of the particulars of the equalization program.