Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should know that the Minister of Finance, not in this budget but in the last budget, provided to the provinces something which they had been asking for for quite some time, the stabilization of transfer payments.
The Minister of Finance clearly did that and for this fiscal year we will be providing both cash and tax points totalling $26.9 billion.
The hon. member should remember that as a result of this government's policies as they relate to interest rates they will save the provinces $1.8 billion. Equally so, under the auspices of equalization, the provinces will now receive $8.6 billion in this fiscal year. That is a hell of a lot of money for the purposes of health care and other social programs.