Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague from Roberval a number of questions. He mentioned he was not good at numbers and I would have to agree with him.
He talked about the deficit climbing up to $800 billion. What he seems to ignore is we have a thing in this economy called growth. Canada is one of the fastest growing economies in the western world right now. If he actually applied an element of growth he would see that deficit start reducing under the finance minister's plan.
He also talked about his great imagination. It is very true. He does have a terrific imagination. The federal government basically collects money on behalf of the provinces. That is part of the constitutionality of this country.
Everyone realizes all governments are in this together and we have to reduce spending. This argument has been going on in Ontario for years. We keep blaming each other. Someone else is always responsible.
The taxpayer is not fooled. In Ontario people are fully cognizant that the province has to reduce spending. We have reduced the transfer payments to the provinces far less than we reduced our own expenditures.
I do not think you can fool the people of Quebec. They know governments have to reduce spending. This includes Quebec, which to this day has a $70 billion deficit. It is not doing anything about it. The leader of Quebec is running around with a referendum or something but he is not dealing with the economic problems of that province. Blaming all the problems on the federal government is not going to wash. I do not think it is going to wash in Quebec either.
Everybody shared in the budget. We did increase taxation on some of our largest banks. Some things are not told. The Royal Bank had a billion dollar profit. What some do not understand is it had losses year after year before that.
Far be it from me to defend the banks, but I am telling the reality of it. Sometimes a billion dollars sounds like a lot but $125 billion worth of assets is not a very good return, especially considering losses in the previous year.
Blaming everything on the banks is not going to cut it. We all have to do something to get our costs of government down. That is what the budget does. It does it from the federal perspective and will do it for the provinces. I would like to have my hon. colleague address that.