Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague, but I am wondering how we get to a new era where we reduce the kind of unfairness that has been pointed out and perhaps might be able to outline the positions in the new Canada Act which call for two basic reforms. The first is the equal treatment of all citizens with per capita grants to provinces for cost shared programs; in other words, amounts directly related to people in the province. The other is a single equalization grant based on macro indicator per capita provincial GDP.
If we go down the wrong road this transfer can become a reward to a province that essentially delivers poor government to its people. Like any benefit program, if it is not in balance it becomes a trap of continuing pursuit of unwise economic behaviour.
Could the member comment on how we could move to a more broadly based estimation of the ability of the provinces to generate revenue and stay out of the trap that a dependency program could create?