Mr. Speaker, last week Statistics Canada released the numbers from the 1996 census and revealed what British Columbians have known all along, that B.C. is home of the biggest population boom in Canada. B.C. grew by 13.5 per cent between 1991 and 1996.
In 1951 the first census that included all 10 provinces showed that B.C. had only 8.3 per cent of Canada's population. Today it has 12.9 per cent. Another indicator of B.C.'s growth is a comparison with the second largest province, Quebec. In 1951 B.C. had 25 per cent of Quebec's population. Today it has 52 per cent.
Despite these numbers B.C. gets only one-third of the amount of federal dollars that Quebec receives for each immigrant. It gets only 28 per cent of the money that Quebec got from the government's infrastructure fund.
It is time for Ottawa to realize that Canada is changing and to start acting like it is 1997, not 1951.