Mr. Speaker, first, the hon. member must know a lot about blackmail, because the federal government she is a member of is certainly very apt in this area. It is blackmailing the people of Quebec with the way it is allocating the money and the conditions it sets.
Where the debt is concerned, nobody said that we should not pay it off. We said that we need to seek some balance. We maintain that the $33 billion the government took from the EI account should not be used to pay off the debt. That money was paid by the workers, by only one segment of society, and not by society at large.
We argue that the money the government is taking from the poor should not all be spent to pay off the debt, because the debt was not incurred by the poorest of the poor. We need some balance.
The tax points we are asking for are only what the government has taken away from the provinces. We only get 14 cents per dollar for health when a few years back we were getting 50 cents per dollar. With less and less money, provinces have to find a way to maintain the health system, while the federal government uses the money to pay off the debt. It is unfair. We want balance. The debt has to be paid off, but let us not forget that there is only one taxpayer.