Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Brandon—Souris brought up our home province a number of times in his presentation. I think it is only responsible in my reply to respond to some of the things that the hon. member has said.
He said that he was concerned about some of the things that were somehow omitted, certain kinds of information omitted from the finance minister's budget of last month. Given that the hon. member is concerned about omissions, I would like to cite a couple of omissions on his part.
First of all, the hon. member for Brandon—Souris mentioned that the Filmon government in the province of Manitoba devotes 34% of its budget to health care. Maybe the hon. member for Brandon—Souris would like to know that 36% of Mr. Filmon's budget comes from the federal government, just a little, small point that he might be interested to know.
Let me go a little further because he makes certain implications about how the provincial government or the province of Manitoba is treated by this budget.
I would like to remind the member for Brandon—Souris that when our government came to office in the fall of 1993, about four and a half years ago, Manitoba, my province, his province, received in both transfer payments, the CHST and equalization payments, a total of $1.951 billion.
What is it in the next fiscal year starting in less than three weeks, April 1? It will be $1.944 billion, a difference of $7 million. Let us put that $7 million into context. In the last three years, as a result of lower interest rates brought about by this government's fiscal policies, the Filmon government in the province of Manitoba has realized savings of $135 million. The province of Manitoba is doing quite well I would say to the hon. member for Brandon—Souris.
Let us also put these transfer payments into further context. I mentioned that the transfer payments will exceed $1.9 billion starting April 1. That accounts for 36% of Manitoba's estimated revenues. That is 50% above the national average and the highest of the four western provinces.
I must admit it is really difficult to take criticism from a representative of the Progressive Conservative Party that ran our economy into the ground between 1984 and 1993. In the interest of facts and in the interest of informing Canadians, the member from Brandon—Souris owes us this piece of information about how the province of Manitoba has been treated by this budget and successive budgets over the last four years.