I thank the member for his question.
I do not think there is a simple answer to the question of whether centralization or decentralization is better. We have got into a pattern where one generation of politicians seems to think that the answer is to centralize all the power in Ottawa-I think we had a lot of that under the Trudeau administration-and the next generation says "No, the answer is to flow all the power out to the provinces". I do not think the answer really is either of those extremes.
It seems that what you have to do in a federation like ours is go through the entire set of power. In some cases you want to strengthen the federal power or the central power, in other cases you want to decentralize.
Our program, for example, calls for strengthening the federal commerce powers, the ability of the federal government to strike down interprovincial barriers to trade. That is a strengthening of the federal power.
On the other hand, we would like to leave the jurisdiction over linguistic and cultural distinctiveness more in the hands of the provinces and the non-governmental sectors. Therefore we decentralize certain aspects of power and centralize others. I think that is the balance we are seeking and not just a knee-jerk reaction one way or the other.