Mr. Speaker, the government wanted to make the $7 billion reduction in transfer payments to the provinces for post-secondary education, health and welfare look like a decentralization measure to demonstrate the flexibility of federalism. In a case of real decentralization a transfer of additional responsibilities is accompanied by the means to assume them, that is, tax points.
How can the Prime Minister have the gall to ask the provinces, as the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs did yesterday, to clean up their finances? He dumps an additional $7 billion charge on them and asks them to do for him the clean up job that he is incapable of doing in federal spending.