Mr. Speaker, not at all. At our meeting with the finance ministers, they asked us, first, to give them at least one year's notice: no surprises. And we did that.
Second, they asked us to cut our own spending first and to cut more than we would cut in payments to them. In 1996, for instance, there will be a 7.3 per cent cut in federal spending and only a 4.3 to 4.4 per cent cut in payments to the provinces. If we consider the province of Quebec, it is only $350 million compared with this year. So these cuts are less than 3 per cent of provincial revenues, and I think that is reasonable.