Mr. Speaker, once again we are faced with a kind of cheque book federalism. We have on the one hand members of the Bloc saying: "We do not get enough". The members from the Reform Party are saying: "We give away too much".
What ever happened to the notion that there is a country that tries to share and distribute things? The problem is that we are now seeing certainly on the benches opposite this sort of small end thinking: "What is important is only within my own little circle".
I thought what we are trying to build in the country is some sense of common interest, that we are trying to reach out and build some strengths together. Unfortunately we seem to have
two parties which think that their only responsibility is to represent very narrow, specific regional interests, that there is not such thing called Canada any more. It seems to be forgotten in their vocabulary. That seems to be the problem.
It is a tragedy that we do not in effect have some groups opposite which speak from a national interest point of view, which speak from the perspective of how to help build a community, how to help pull people together as opposed to this notion of how to separate them, divide them and start adding things up by some accounting; we transferred 1.5 here and they got 1.2 there.
That is how you destroy a country. I say in all honesty to the hon. member, that is how you destroy a country.