Madam Speaker, I am pleased to share my colleague's time speaking to Bill C-65, an act to amend the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act.
Equalization is a principle which provides certain revenues to provinces that are deemed to be at a disadvantage from provinces that are in an advantageous situation economically and financially. This is a concept that I heard the Liberals, the Tories and the Reformers talk about with respect to different issues. For example, when it is the large international oil companies that want tax breaks, the Reformers and the Liberals talk about a level playing field for the international oil companies.
An equalization bill is a good example of a level playing field. It provides revenues to those provinces that are unable to provide basic government services to their people because of various economic disparities. The concept of equalization to ensure that consistent benefits are paid to various provinces that require them was enshrined in the Constitution when it was patriated in 1982.
There are some interesting issues in this bill which I want to address.
The first one that comes to mind is that each province which is a have-not province, seven out of ten, have a different per capita formula. For example, Quebec receives $521 per capita in equalization payments from the have provinces and from the national treasury. Nova Scotia gets $1,209. For Manitoba it is $898. New Brunswick gets $1,154. Newfoundland gets $1,648. P.E.I. gets $1,340. But Saskatchewan, which has more miles of roads than any other province in Canada even though we only have one million people, only gets a per capita grant of $232.
It is quite interesting that Quebec has 7,100,000 people and gets $521 per person. Saskatchewan has just over one million people and gets $232 per person. We in Saskatchewan have national transportation commitments that Quebec does not have even though we have less than one-seventh its population. Of course we get only one-third of its grants per capita. I raise this in the House and with the government opposite as to why that inequity would be.
I can see that perhaps with P.E.I. and some of the smaller Atlantic provinces that have had a long tradition of being reliant on federal government revenues. It was appropriate for the Liberal government in Ottawa and sometimes from time to time a Tory government to provide those moneys to elect provincial governments in Atlantic Canada.
I would like to monitor that and see what happens down the road, in spite of this particular initiative, when an NDP government gets elected. That may happen very soon in Nova Scotia. I want to make sure that the money the government is giving to Nova Scotia now is similar to what it will get when it becomes an NDP government.
On the other hand, we have heard my colleague from Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys make reference to the fact that when there is an NDP provincial government, as in Saskatchewan for example, we are there to clean up the mess of the former Liberal-Tory-Reform coalitions which have made every effort possible to bankrupt our province. The people tossed them out and elected an NDP government and we end up cleaning up their mess. Not only are we a very modest recipient of fiscal arrangements but on occasion we have been a have province and we have shared revenues that have been derived from good management with other provinces that require that assistance.
We see some key changes in this equalization agreement. My colleague made reference to casino revenues. I will make reference for example to the resource revenues which will reflect the value rather than the volume of harvested timber. This again benefits Quebec. British Columbia, with a very high quality timber, is not affected at all because it is a have province. But it provides a little extra money for Quebec and perhaps it needs it. Perhaps the provincial government would be better suited to manage the economy and balance its budget rather than continue to have huge deficits.
There is an issue which is very important to Saskatchewan right now. My province of Saskatchewan is experiencing an agricultural crisis. Farmers are desperate to get their crops in this spring. They have no revenues to do that.
We have some very significant problems in agriculture, not because of a local management problem, but because of an international situation which has arisen. European and American governments nationally have funded and subsidized agriculture in their countries to a very large extent while Canadian governments are eliminating subsidies for agriculture altogether.
I am not saying subsidies are the answer, but when a federal government abandons its farmers, farmers in Canada end up suffering even though we are providing most of our products for export while the European farmers and American farmers are the recipients of huge subsidies from their governments.
The Liberal government has cut the Crow benefit which was a transportation subsidy. It has taken $340 million a year outside of our agricultural economy. Now the government is saying it wants the Saskatchewan government to chip in 40% for an agricultural program to help those farmers who are in need.
Agriculture is not something we benefit from locally in Canada. We export a vast majority of Saskatchewan's production to other parts of the world that require food. This is a national agricultural situation. Actually it is international in nature when it comes to subsidies, yet the Liberal government says it is not going to provide any assistance to these farmers unless the province comes up with 40% of the funding.
The government is offering only $450 million for all of Canada. Saskatchewan might get 40% of that in a particular year. That may amount to $5,000 or $6,000 per farmer which will not make any difference in terms of substantially improving their position to put a crop in this spring. The government has to consider that.
Over and above equalization, or maybe including the equalization, there should be some consideration that foreign governments are subsidizing their agricultural base. We should provide some reciprocity for Canadian farmers to make sure they are not put out of business.
The Liberal Minister of Natural Resources, the member for Wascana, is from Saskatchewan. He has said that Saskatchewan's equalization benefits are being increased because of the problems of lower income in agriculture and a substantial decline in resource prices and that the Liberal government is going to give us $3 million this year as an increase in equalization.
The minister has said that Saskatchewan should be able to put that into its agricultural program. Yet he does not understand that we are not being asked to put in three million bucks. We are being asked to put in $45 million to $60 million this year alone. But he is going to help out by taking $340 million out of our economy from the elimination of the Crow benefit, giving us $3 million back and saying “good luck, this is a real good economic program for farmers and for western Canada”. The farmers in western Canada have seen enough of this shell game being undertaken by the Liberals to trick farmers into believing the Liberals are actually doing something for the economy.
Manitoba is in an even more desperate situation with this equalization bill. Manitoba is slated to lose $37 million over five years. This accounts for 18.5% of Manitoba's overall revenues, not the $37 million, but the total equalization payment. I believe provincial officials are very upset about this. They are opposed and are asking for amendments in the next go around.
What is more disturbing than all the issues I have raised is that the Reform Party goes on record as saying that it does not support equalization. It does not support a level playing field for the provinces and regionally based economies. Reformers do support a level playing field for Conrad Black. They do support a level playing field for the oil companies that are international in nature. They do support a level playing field for their large corporate friends, but they do not support equalization for provinces and regions that require equalization assistance from our national treasury.
I call upon the Saskatchewan and Manitoba members of parliament from the Reform Party to stand in this House and say they oppose the Reform Party's view that equalization is bad and it will not support equalization payments to provinces that require them.