Madam Speaker, after listening to the hon. member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo talk about this excellent budget in terms of job creation by the business sector, I think that he is probably mistaken. We will continue to have an enormous debt and enormous interest payments on this debt and we will have to keep borrowing from the countries to which we already owe this debt.
Some say that the deficit has been reduced, but it has merely been passed on to the provinces. For example, in the years to come, Quebec will receive $1.5 billion to $2 billion less each year. The federal government says that it may return $1.5 billion less to the province of Quebec. We all agree with that and we would even have preferred that it not return anything to Quebec but that it not tax Quebecers any more.
Finally, what the federal government is doing is not only to continue taxing Quebecers as much as before, but to tax them even more. Moreover, the federal government is increasing the debt of Quebecers by $7 to $8 billion for next year alone. This means that Quebecers will again become poorer and poorer.
When the government says that it wants to transfer to the provinces the responsibilities that belong to them, it must also reduce their tax burden.
But all the government is doing is transferring to the provinces, and especially to Quebec, the burden of the debt and the deficit as well as the horrible task to manage the deficit, a bigger chunk of which Quebecers will be asked to take upon themselves, since the federal government continues to increase taxes while reducing transfers to Quebec. This is unfair and seems to me like a very clever trick designed by the government. I hope Quebecers will see through all this and will understand what the federal government is doing to Quebec by reducing transfers and increasing taxes for Quebecers.