Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has spoken about the need for stable funding and federal transfers to the provinces to maintain the now new Canada health and social transfer, formerly known as the EPF funding programs.
Could the hon. member comment on the kind of stable funding the government has provided to the provinces over the past four years, stable funding which has resulted in a 35% cut in absolute cash transfers to the provinces, to the two highest priority programs delivered by government, namely health care and education?
I would like him to respond to that record of instability in those transfers in light of the fact the federal government has only cut its own program spending by 9.3% in the same period of time.
Perhaps the hon. member could illuminate the House and Canadians as to why his government felt that program spending by the federal government like the handout programs of the Minister of Canadian Heritage to special interest groups and free flag giveaways and the Minister of Industry's billions of dollars in handouts to corporations, businesses and regional development programs were a higher priority than health transfers to the provinces which rank consistently among Canadians top priorities?
Why are we to believe the government's commitment today to maintain stable funding for these programs when it made a similar promise, in fact the same promise, for stable funding in the 1993 election and broke that promise?