Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Medicine Hat for his well stated question. I agree with him totally. It has been unfortunate that the Liberals and governments of the past have managed in such a poor fashion to cut over $7 billion in transfers to the provinces. Shame. That is what I say. I agree with the hon. member that it is a terrible thing.
What we propose and what we have always said, as the hon. member questioned, is there needs to be a stronger commitment from the federal government to deal with the provinces.
We heard from a number of members that the tax points are an element that the provinces can use in order to spend money within their provinces. There still remains a problem of flexibility that comes with this argument of tax points. If the provincial governments do have increased tax points, as many members opposite argued, what good are those tax points if they do not have the flexibility to actually implement the programs that would work best within their provinces?
I think the core of the debate is also addressing the fact that the federal government needs to move outside of this domain of central, heavy handed politics and start working to create a real sense of unity, start working to entrench the transfers that were initially taken out of the system by this government and build stronger unity in this country.