Madam Speaker, it is great if one happens to live in a very affluent province. Alberta is rapidly becoming a very affluent province and probably already is. It has its own set of problems to deal with.
Atlantic Canada constantly gets criticized for the kinds of regional programs it has to prop up its economy. The Liberals, the Alliance and other parties criticize the kinds of regional development programs there. They say that they do not work and that we have to do something new.
We are now in the year 2001. The have not provinces, the provinces that are the recipients of equalization payments, want to be net contributors to this country. The only way they can do that is to have some kind of an incentive to develop these resources. The only way to do that is to retool and rejig the equalization formula.
There has been some recognition. When the Minister of Finance came to Newfoundland during the byelection campaign in St. John's West, he made some very good comments about equalization. He said it was time to have a look at it and see what could be done to help out the poorer provinces. A couple of days after he got back, I questioned him on that particular issue and he skated around it. I had reason to believe that he was not really serious about what he had said in Newfoundland.
If the current regional development programs in Atlantic Canada are not working, and maybe some of them are not, then I believe it is time to try something new. The various provinces like Newfoundland, Labrador and those that are the recipients of equalization payments need to have a rejigging and retooling of that formula.