Mr. Speaker, there have been references made to the view of fiscal federalism of professional economists. I would like to bring forth one study with which I am familiar.
Mr. Mansell, chair of the University of Calgary economics department, has made some fairly extensive studies on fiscal federalism in the broad sense. He published a paper in 1998 that studied the period 1961 to 1998.
There were some interesting findings in that report. Only two provinces were net contributors to federalism under his study. There was Alberta with an average per capita contribution of $2,000 per year and Ontario was second with $244. Every other province was a net taker from the system.
There are some real disparities. Manitoba and Saskatchewan had the same standard of living as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but they received considerably less in the way of transfer payments, equalization payments and other benefits from the federal government.
One of the really perverse findings which relates to a comment that was raised by the member is that Alberta actually has a law which prohibits the provincial government from giving direct subsidies to a corporation or government. The federal government takes money out of Alberta and then turns around and gives grants to entities such as Bombardier.
I heard the member make comments that she thought Quebec was being shortchanged in that regard. I have a difficult time understanding her point. If I understand the Bombardier situation correctly, a whole lot of loans have never been repaid. They seem to be loans that nobody ever calls in. They just sit on the books and so on.
In her mathematics about Quebec being shortchanged on subsidies to corporations did she include these loans that never seem to have to be repaid by Bombardier?