He can say what he likes, because he will have the floor after me. In the spirit of the holidays, I would like to use less aggressive, more parliamentary language.
So, these were errors, but there have been surpluses. These surpluses, year in, year out, have always been greater than $10 billion recently. Ten billion dollars is quite something.
We could talk about the issue of surpluses for a long time. However, I would like to add another dimension to the debate. For years, for a very long time now, the federal government has enjoyed interfering in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
Our hon. colleague and new finance critic, the member for Joliette, told us that there was intrusion in provincial jurisdictions to the tune of $15 billion each year.
I remember reading in a report by the Bélanger-Campeau commission that the cost of administering the federal government's intrusions in provincial jurisdictions from year to year, the cost of administrative overlap, was estimated at the time at $2 billion. That was in the early 1990s. We can assume that this amount has increased since then. It is quite incredible.
Nonetheless, there is a positive note in the Romanow report. He admits that there is fiscal imbalance. A commission in Quebec, headed by Mr. Séguin, had determined that there was fiscal imbalance between the provinces and the federal government, and that the health needs were obviously in Quebec and in the provinces, but the money was in Ottawa.
Here is what is happening. Everyone knows that the population is aging. Health, in terms of technologies, increased cost of medication, equipment and capital investment has become more expensive. Starting with 23% in 1995, the Liberals in power decreased transfer payments to 14%.
We can talk about fiscal imbalance, but it could be argued that with the increase in costs, there are two dimensions that come into play at the same time in provincial budgets. We can talk about fiscal strangulation. By 2010, the portion of the budget allocated to health and education in Quebec will represent 85% of the costs.