It was $100 billion, my hon. colleague reminds me, that it sucked out of the province of Alberta in the name of interventionism, in the name of “we have all the answers for you”. That approach simply has not worked. That is why there is Liberal alienation in western Canada. That alienation is growing in all regions of the country with the kinds of things we are seeing the government do.
We saw reference to that yesterday in the House. We saw it today in question period talking about the government's continued discrimination against families, against families that have made the decision to have one of the parents stay home to look after the kids. We heard discriminatory and inflammatory comments being made by the Secretary of State for the Status of Women, the finance minister and other key members of the government. That is their approach to governing and it is shameful.
The bill which would seek to establish equalization payments was done in the same fashion. There was three days of notice that the bill was coming, after having five years to deal with the issue. The government has had five or six budgets to deal with the issue of single income families and remedy the tax discrimination that it continues to enforce penalizing families in Canada and it did nothing about it.
The government pays lip service to the things Canadians are most concerned about yet it fails to take action. The bill is another example of the way of doing business with the Liberal government. The people of Canada are growing very tired of this approach. That is why there is western alienation and alienation in other parts of the country.
I used an analogy last day of a famous Charlie Brown comic strip of which we are all aware. There is character named Lucy who continues to pull the ball away from Charlie Brown just before he kick it. That is how the Liberal government deals with the people of Canada. It is holding the football, pulling it away every time and punishing taxpayers and other individuals as well.