Mr. Speaker, for several months now, the Minister of Finance has stubbornly refused to compensate Quebec for harmonizing the GST, although according to the calculations done by Quebec's Minister of Finance Quebec is entitled to $2 billion in compensation for having harmonized its sales tax. This estimate, it goes without saying, is very different from the one arrived at by the Minister of Finance, and that is why it is becoming increasingly clear that the solution to this problem will be political rather than bureaucratic in nature.
Does the Minister of Finance realize that his compensation formula, the McKenna formula, that compensates a province if, and only if, it is losing more than 5 per cent of its revenues, is an arbitrary formula and that Quebec is actually entitled to demand compensation similar to that received by the three maritime provinces?