Madam Speaker, the hon. member will realize that you win some and you lose some.
It seems to me that this is a case of sheer economics. At some point the federal government looked at its piggy bank and decided it did not have enough money to pass on to the provinces. Its own fiscal house was not in order. It was in serious trouble, in debt and its budgets were not balanced.
There was no other recourse for the provinces. They knew they had to get the money from some place. What the provinces then have to do is tax the people even more with all kinds of ingenious taxes, ones we have never heard of.
If this is a problem of economics and it is the federal government that has caused this problem with its own fiscal mismanagement, could my colleague make any suggestions how the federal government could have taken care of this problem without putting the burden on the provinces? Could the government here in Ottawa have done something to change that?