Mr. Speaker, unlike his federal counterpart, the Quebec finance minister decided to tackle the deficit in his very first budget. In just one year, he will reduce Quebec's deficit by one third. By comparison, the Liberals only managed to reduce the federal deficit by 10 per cent with their first budget. The cuts in transfers to the provinces announced in last February's federal budget will deprive Quebec of $650 million in 1996-97 and $1.9 billion in 1997-98. Yet, the finance minister has the nerve to criticize Quebec's budget.
Did the federal Minister of Finance spend the first year of his mandate trying to figure out how he was going to tackle the federal deficit, only to come up with this idea of offloading it onto the provinces?