Mr. Speaker, I listened to what the member for Lotbinière had to say about federal transfers.
According to an October 4, 1997 article written by Claude Picher federal transfers are not determined by the size of provincial budgets, but by the size of the individual provincial economies, which indicates that federal transfers have grown rather than shrunk.
And yet the same figures and the same amounts are involved. How can that be explained? I would like the member opposite to explain. And yet when we talk about federal transfers, the figures are the same right now, the amount is essentially the same. Provincial government expenditures increased much faster than federal transfers until 1990. I will give you an example in closing: in Quebec, the figure was 3% in 1965; today it is 5%. Why?