Madam Speaker, quite frankly the decision to engage in the tax point exercise was in 1977, certainly a long time ago. I was not around. I believe that the government confronted with the same choice would not do that.
It simply has not worked out. In the province of Ontario, the premier continually ignores tax points. In fact he delights in spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money showing how little the federal government is contributing to health care, totally and erroneously misrepresenting the position of the province of Ontario.
When the member says that this is a fair and equitable arrangement if we give tax points, it is not in reality in the day to day push and shove of politics. Provinces will not come clean. They will not stand up and say “We honestly understand what happened. We honestly understand that tax points were given to us. We will give you credit for it”. They just say “You are not doing your share. You are only giving us 13 cents on the dollar and therefore you have nothing to say in the area of health care”. That is not true. We are not willing to accept that. We are not going to accept it in the future.