Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to stand and reply to my hon. colleague whose remarks were very well taken.
However, I would like to react to his observation that because the federal government is cutting transfers to the provinces for health and education it is irresponsible.
He correctly points out that we certainly are trying to stimulate business. On the one hand, by stimulating businesses we create energy in the economy. Businesses, for profit industries, do make money and they are self-controlling to a certain extent in that they are accountable to their shareholders. By stimulating small and medium size businesses we do much good for the economy.
The problem with the health and educational sector is that they are industries which are entirely not for profit. The difficulty is that at both the provincial and the federal level, and I think my colleague will agree, there has been a lack of scrutiny and demand for efficiencies that perhaps there should have been, particularly through the late 1970s and early 1980s.
As I see it, the problem is that when the federal government is giving transfers to the organizations which are under provincial control, it realizes that there are enormous efficiencies, perhaps operating at about one third of their maximum efficiency. What is the choice if we are going to bring efficiencies to this sector but to cut the transfers from the federal government to the provincial governments? How else can we encourage the provincial governments which actually control these sectors to demand better accountability and better efficiencies?