Madam Speaker, the member was erudite and thorough in his response. He made the point that the value of tax points ceded in the 1970s has grown sixfold. I do not know if that is in purely nominal terms or in real terms. I suspect it is in nominal terms. Nevertheless they have grown over time.
That is the great virtue of tax points as opposed to simple transfers that take place through the equalization system or through the CHST. Such transfers do not grow and therefore do not respond to the growing need for provincial expenditures in health care, education and other areas that will grow over time, particularly health care as the population ages.
What justification can be given for not ensuring that our health care system, which is by consensus across the country the most valuable of all our social programs, is funded through an expanding, guaranteed tax base that cannot be cut as was the CHST or its predecessor in the early to mid-1990s by the Liberal government? Those cuts left provinces in the lurch and created a funding crisis which continues to this day, notwithstanding the partial and very tardy, if I may say, return of some of those funds to the provinces.
Looking at those two options, what would be the principal reason for denying provinces a predictable tax base whereby they could operate the most important of all social programs at their disposal?