Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about the desire of the provinces to have the financial burden shared equally between provinces and the federal government. That in fact was not the request. It was in fact for the measures taken at the provincial level to be fully funded by the federal government. I am sure that he would be the first to understand how such a situation of one level of government not being responsible for raising the money, but nevertheless being responsible for spending, does lead to the very type of cost overruns that are most regrettable and we should try to avoid.
He also talked about the cancellation of meetings. Yes, it is true that one meeting of ministers, the energy and environment ministers, was delayed one week from October 21 to October 28, and subsequently a meeting of deputy ministers was delayed 10 days. However it did take place last Wednesday. Therefore it is pretty clear that we have had two meetings that were delayed relatively short periods of time and this is far from a collapse of federal-provincial relations.