Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, because I believe that the points that he raises are very important indeed. While standing in for a colleague of mine, I attended meetings of the Standing Committee on Industry, Sciences and Technology where we heard testimony from universities, particularly from the Maritime provinces, complaining about the lack of grants to cover the indirect costs of research. So there is a real problem from that perspective. We are being told there will be a solution, and we will see what the government comes up with.
However, I think that the best way for the federal government to respect provincial jurisdiction and Canada's constitution would be to increase the transfers, the Canada Health and Social Transfer. Or better yet, given the surplus that has been accumulated in recent years and that is expected in the coming years—I am referring here to the Conference Board study that was conducted for the provinces—the federal government could withdraw completely from part of the tax field in order to allow the provinces to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities.
We will recall that the federal government only contributes eight cents of every dollar spent in education. This is true for Quebec, but it is also true for the other provinces. So, I think that it should be one of these two approaches: either increase the transfers to the provinces, or withdraw from the tax field. The Séguin commission proposed a withdrawal from the goods and services tax field, for example, to correct the fiscal imbalance.
I will close by reminding the House of one thing. The issue of fiscal imbalance is about more than finances. It is about democracy. When the provinces no longer have the means to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities, it becomes difficult for them to remain autonomous in terms of policy, and they lose their accountability to their citizens when it comes to the policy choices that they make. Personally, I believe that we could do it, if there was a real will to correct the current federal shortcomings. We have the means to do so, but, as I indicated, I think that the political will to correct existing imbalances has been dead for many years in Canada.