Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate with my Bloc Quebecois colleagues.
Each time there is a debate with the Bloc Quebecois, I find myself in a difficult position. I certainly like the spirit and the passion of Bloc Quebecois members, but I have great difficulty accepting their ideas. I am a partisan of centralization and government intervention.
On this issue today I could not be further away from where the Bloc Quebecois stands. I come from a city, downtown Toronto, that every year sends $38 billion to the treasury of Canada. There is not a day that passes when I do not have municipal councillors and provincial members of parliament phoning me, sending letters or calling my office to say they are not getting their fair share in Toronto. They say Ontario is not getting its fair share from the national government. Just the greater Toronto area alone last year received $38 billion. This is a tremendous sum of money.
I say to my friends in the Bloc that I came to this place because I believe that this Chamber is to take all the money that comes from the communities that are doing well, from Toronto, Vancouver or Alberta, and distribute that money in a fair and equal manner. We are here to do that so that we can build a nation.
I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us in the Chamber to be like the Speaker was at one time, a referee. We are the referees of that tremendous sum of money that comes to us. We are here to make sure that if there are special circumstances, and I do not care which province it is, where there are difficulties, when remote regions need extra support, whether it is for infrastructure or for certain unforeseen situations, we are here to use the treasury of Canada to treat every region of the country in a fair way.
For me, the notion of further decentralizing the Chamber is just out of the question. In fact I would say with respect to many of my own colleagues in the executive of the government, that they have gone way too far in decentralizing the national government. I think that at times we have gone further to the right than the previous prime minister.
If there was ever a moment in time when we needed to rethink the fiscal framework of the country and the distribution of funds to the provinces, it is this moment. It should not be evolving more. It should be reclaiming some of that responsibility. It should be bringing it back so that we are in a position to reach out to those people in our communities who are most disadvantaged.
I have to say to the members opposite and to the esteemed finance critic of the Bloc Quebecois that in our province right now we have a provincial premier who is very solid in his position. We have a very difficult position with affordable housing. We cannot get our federal-provincial relationship going in trying to get affordable housing.
All of us in the House announced on March 5 that $500 million was to go to the farmers of the country. As of this moment that money has not been distributed because the federal-provincial agreements have not been worked on and have not been signed.
We as national members of parliament should have a mechanism to use when the provinces are not co-operating with us in the national interest, especially where low income Canadians are not being served. I think we should intervene, we should go direct, in order to solve those problems. It is for that reason that I do not think we should devolve any more dollars or tax points other than what is the basic amount now.
I also want to bring up a very important case for the leader of the Bloc Quebecois and its finance critic. The hon. member has a situation right now that exists in his province just outside of Montreal on the Kahnawake reserve. It is the Mohawk Internet technology park. The situation there is that our first nations people are trying desperately to become part of the mainstream economy. They have hired expert advice and are attempting to become part of the main economy of Montreal, Quebec. Their own province is walking away from support.