Mr. Speaker, I was just waiting for the end of the interpretation. Unfortunately I am unilingual and I depend on those wonderful people in the booths to do my talking for me.
I will answer the question in the following way. Indeed there is but one taxpayer. We are burdened to death with taxes at all levels of government. The federal government takes the largest share, then the provinces and our municipalities take some.
I would definitely agree with the member but I would ask him to come to a small degree of realism. Members of the Bloc are intent upon leading their people into forming a separate government independent from Canada. That is their commitment. They are good at communicating it and I have to admire them. It is a party that has managed to stay on track and focused on what its goals are.
However I caution the member, the members of his party and all citizens of Quebec to make sure they do the arithmetic accurately. As residents of a recipient province in the equalization program, they would have a very hard time demonstrating to me, using hard facts and numbers, that they are not net beneficiaries of the program. Undoubtedly they pay their share of taxes and I have no problem with that. However they are net beneficiaries when it comes to the equalization program. The numbers are very clear.
Other than that the member was right on in his statements.