Mr. Speaker, there were a lot of questions in that intervention. I would be happy to address them.
My hon. colleague says that Canada was not the only one that ran up a debt, that everyone else did too, so why pick on us. I do not know about you, Mr. Speaker, but your mother was probably like mine. She used to say to me: "If all your friends jump off a bridge, does that mean you are going to too?". We are not responsible for other countries. The leadership of our country is responsible for us. It has not done a very responsible job of looking after our interests in the long term.
Members opposite are always pleading for solutions from our party. We have worked hard to provide them with solutions. We will even be providing them with an alternative budget which is something no opposition party has ever done before.
I would suggest to the hon. member that perhaps he and his party need to work a little harder to provide some solutions. They should provide some glimmer of reform solutions to the people of Canada. I might add that solutions in the social policy area were promised loud and long and have never been delivered on.
Members opposite need to realize that if tax points were given to the provinces in order to allow them to have more control over the social programs in their provinces, the tax points grow as the tax base of the province grows. The tax base, the economies of our provinces and our country have been growing.
Once we give provinces tax points, their potential tax base actually expands, many over time. They actually have more hope of funding their programs long term and having a continuing source of revenue than if they were dependent on transfers from the federal government. As we have seen, transfers can be cut or are very uncertain. Provinces that have their own tax base to draw from are much more secure-and my economist colleague is nodding so I think I have this right-than if they are totally dependent on whatever largesse the federal government might decide to give them from time to time.
My colleague mentions fears that if there is not a centralist government, a tightly controlled federation from the centre which has always been the Liberal vision of this country, that somehow things will go to hell in a hand basket. I might point out to him that things are not too far from going to hell in a hand basket with the centralist vision having been very firmly in place for the last 25 years.
Surely we can do no worse than to trust those governments which are closest to us the people. We have the most impact on those and we can influence them more effectively than distant, federal central governments. If we could have more say and more influence over our own local governments, we would be a lot better off than we are today.