Madam Speaker, I would like to hear the comments of the hon. member for Palliser on a couple of things that I picked up on in his speech.
One is the question of the formula. He mentioned several times things that he found good or bad in the formula. I would like to get his party's take on something that has certainly been running through my mind for a long time. That is, it would be very expeditious to simply base the equalization payments on the per capita GDP in each province and not get involved in any way in all this convoluted arithmetic. If we know where the GDP of a province is low and where the GDP of a province is high, we shuffle money from the haves to the have nots. We do not have to go through all this. It is becoming something like the Income Tax Act, totally unintelligible. I would like the hon. member's view on that.
My other question is perhaps a little more difficult because it presumes that the formula is the be all and the end all.
I would like to know what effect that specific land claim settlements will have on the equalization formula with the infusion of federal money to buy the land and the gross distortion of the municipal tax base by the creation of these new reserves. Will this, through the formula, create discrepancies or inequalities that we may not be aware of?