He is the vice-chair of the finance committee. He went on to say:
As a reflection of this importance, equalization is the only transfer program that is actually enshrined in the Constitution act. The goal of equalization, of providing equality of opportunity across Canada, is extraordinarily important. We should also recognize that a goal of equalization should be to provide a ladder for provinces and individuals in those provinces, those recipient provinces, to rise from their status as recipient to the point that they can participate in the free market economy fully.
That is the nuts and bolts of the legislation. The equalization system should under no circumstance provide barriers or roadblocks to success for individuals and provinces as they try to bootstrap themselves into a more prosperous economy. The equalization system, as it is formulated, can create and encourage a continued roadblock to success for these provinces. That is perhaps the most fundamentally important issue in equalization which has not been addressed and which needs to be addressed.
The Conservative Party is concerned that the government, instead of debating the issue, discussing it over the past five years and trying to come up with an equalization plan that provides all regions of the countries with opportunities to succeed, continues with the same old tired policies that we need to revisit.
If we are ingenious about giving opportunities to recipient provinces and about eliminating barriers to success, it will take more than a few hours of debate in the House of Commons and some witnesses appearing before the finance committee.
We need a new visionary approach to equalization. We need a new equalization program that provides a ladder to success and not barriers to success as this one does. Our party believes that an equalization program is necessary and that we should continue to protect and encourage equalization as a tenet of Canadian social policy. We can make it better as parliamentarians.
There are a number of concerns from our provincial counterparts, especially those in Atlantic Canada. Many of these concerns are relative to natural gas revenues. Offshore natural gas and oil revenues for some of the provinces affected, be it Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, and the opportunities for Nova Scotians, Newfoundlanders or Atlantic Canadians to bootstrap themselves into some level of prosperity in the 21st century are largely contingent on these revenues.
We should be very careful not to create a clawback through changes in equalization. That is exactly what we have now, a clawback that effectively eliminates and reduces significantly the benefits being made by these provinces.
In the past governments made the mistake of trying to protect regions of the country from risks of the future. In so doing with social programming and reinvestment in times when the government is not able to do that, we can create a very dangerous precedent and a very dangerous set of political dynamics.
At no other time in the history of Canada has Nova Scotia been positioned as well on the doorstep to the future as it is now. In no other time since Newfoundland joined Confederation has it been positioned as well as it is now to enter the country as a full-fledged partner.
The vision of the federal government must do what it chose to do from 1957 to 1965 in the province of Alberta when it allowed that province to keep its equalization payments as well as its revenues. If we had a similar program in Atlantic Canada for five years, and if we allowed those provinces to keep their oil and gas revenues as well as their equalization payments, in a very short period of time they would be able to be contributors to Canadian equalization instead of drawing on Canadian equalization.
That is one instance. There are also other opportunities in these areas: the gas fields on Sable Island, the stepout wells that are being drilled this year, the deep water drilling that will be taking place on the east coast, the potential of the Laurentian sub-basin, the potential off Labrador, and the additional wells being drilled off Hibernia. Newfoundlanders, Nova Scotians, Prince Edward Islanders and New Brunswickers have their foot in the door of the future.
The government has to show the vision to open that door wider. We have had Premier John Hamm campaigning in Ottawa. He was in Alberta a few weeks ago on his so-called campaign for fairness.
This is not rocket science. This is simply saying that the province, taking Nova Scotia as an example, manages to keep only 19 cents of every dollar of offshore oil and gas revenues in Nova Scotia. The rest of the money, the other 81 cents, goes to the coffers and fattens the revenues of the federal government.
There is something absolutely and incredibly wrong with that. We should not have to discuss the fact that 81 cents go to the feds and that 19 cents go to Nova Scotia. This is not the scale of justice. It is not imbalance at all; it is completely out of whack.
When Nova Scotia and Newfoundland signed the offshore accords, the intent of those accords was to give undersea revenues to the provinces that brought those revenues into Confederation. In 1867 when Nova Scotia joined Confederation, it brought with it those offshore revenues because it controlled those revenues. That became a net contributor to the economy and in the last 10 years it has been a huge contributor to the economy.
We have to find a way to ensure or enshrine, because the legislation is protected in the constitution, that some of that money goes back to the provinces from whence it came, whether from Alberta with revenues that come from underground, whether from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland with revenues that come from offshore, or from any other province in the country. There has to be some flexibility in the equalization system to accept varying and differing circumstances at different periods in our history. What we have now does not do that. We need some positive change and soon.