Mr. Speaker, we have here a leadership candidate for the Canadian Alliance who has a vision of what I call holding company federalism where the federal government is a sort of holding company for the provinces.
He said this in Montreal in a speech and I gather he has written a letter to some papers like Le Droit and others, saying that the federal government should no longer collect any taxes, that all of the taxes in this country should be collected by the provincial governments above the local level and that the provinces every year should send a cheque to the federal government.
I find that a very strange way to run a country, a very strange way to run a federal government and a very strange vision of what kind of a country we should have where the only tax collector would be the provincial governments that would send a cheque once a year to the federal government.
That might be acceptable in the case of the Senate. If the funds were insufficient, we could get rid of the place. However, in terms of all the other important programs like health care, education and the farm crisis, I know in the heart of the member from Calgary Centre he certainly cannot support Stockwell Day and the kind of vision that he has for our country where the federal government has no role and no say whatsoever on the most fundamental policy in this country, which is the right to tax.
I know he must be pretty disturbed by Mr. Day's new vision, a vision that was rejected by the founders of the United States in the independence state in Philadelphia in 1776 when they rejected the idea that all taxes should be collected at the state level and then a cheque every once in a while would go to the federal government.
I look forward to my friends in the Canadian Alliance Reform Party getting up in this house and putting some distance between themselves and Mr. Day. Let us shed some light on this topic that Mr. Day has raised. I see my friend from Calgary is champing at the bit to get up and make a statement that sets him apart from Mr. Day.