Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech from the member for Winnipeg North Centre. I thank her for raising many very important and very relevant themes as they affect the province that we share, the province of Manitoba.
I also thank her for reminding the House of Commons of the many shortcomings of the Mulroney Tory government. Sometimes I think people forget that a lot of the negative trends that we are seeing lately and that we are actively fighting against found their origins in the philosophy of the Mulroney Tories.
What is hard to imagine today is that even though the Mulroney years were cruel, heartless, callous and meanspirited, many of us look back fondly at those times because compared to the Liberal government today, those times seem benevolent by comparison. The Liberals have taken those trends farther than Mulroney ever had the guts to do. Even though he warned us that we would not recognize the country when he was through with it, frankly, after seven years of Liberal government, we are starting to realize that we do not recognize the very country that we are so proud of building.
Would the hon. member elaborate a little bit more on the equalization formula in the year following? We all understand that relieving the cap for the year 1999-2000 is based on the demands of the various first ministers and ministers of finance as they met over the years. However, the reinstatement of the cap in the year following, which, as I understand from the hon. member's speech, could be at a rate lower than it was before and would give us a one year holiday on the cap, may in fact end up being a lower cap than it was originally. In other words, we are going backward on this idea of greater equalization. That is the first thing I would like her to comment on.
Second, would the member speak about the clawback ideas? Is it not true that if we allowed some of the have not provinces to keep the increased revenue that they might have instead of losing dollar for dollar, they may climb out of the trap that they are in now, relying on equalization solely?