Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to ask a question of my colleague from Abitibi and will start by rectifying once again some of the statements he has made.
He said something earlier on about transfers to the provinces. I would like to remind him of this. He said that the provinces could do what they wished with transfer payments, could use them as they saw fit. I would remind him that, when he was a Conservative—he ought to remember—there was quite a battle with the Minister of Health to make sure that the Canada Health Act was respected by the provinces. There was a huge fuss connected to transfer payments. British Columbia had been threatened with a loss of its transfer payments less than two years ago, because it was not conforming to certain aspects of the Canada Health Act. So saying that these are transfers with no strings attached is totally false, and once again a misleading statement.
As for economics, my colleague has suggested here already that a gift and a loan were the same thing. Allow me to say that this is totally false. I went to the manager of my caisse populaire, and told him that I would not be repaying my mortgage because a gift and a loan were the same thing. All he needed to do was to phone the hon. member for Abitibi, who would explain it all to him. He strongly suggested that I make my mortgage payments, because that was not the way it worked.
The third point, federal transfer payments—I am getting to my question now—the hon. member for Abitibi does not say this when he talks about health and social programs. As for cash transfers the government was making when the Liberals came to power, these were $17 billion a year. Now, the figure is barely $11 billion. They cut $6 billion in cash transfers and forced the provinces to play the bad guys in health and education, which are their responsibility.
He spoke of another concept as well and I would like him to take the next few minutes to clarify it for us. He referred a great deal to equalization payments—