Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for her question. She is assistant finance critic and shows great professionalism. She helped prepare the analyses I presented today.
Yes, my colleague is right in saying that the fiscal imbalance has devastating effects. Over the next few years, in the health sector alone, we are talking about a 7% increase in costs due to various factors such as equipment renewal , the hiring of new staff and the aging population, which is an inescapable reality. This means that we cannot skimp on the quality of health care services offered to the public. We must have quality health care services and sufficient resources to meet existing and future needs.
The same thing goes for education. We constantly hear that education is the spearhead of a nation's future, particularly in the current context of globalization and rapid technological change, which is why the public must have access to services of the highest quality on a consistent basis.
It is not normal that Quebec and all the other provinces, having to deliver these two essential services, do not have an adequate revenue base. However, the federal government has a structural surplus year after year. It does not know what to do with all this money. So, over the last three years, it has spent $15 billion in provincial jurisdictions. This money has not been spent in health care or education, but for initiatives that duplicate or even go against initiatives by the provinces and the Quebec government in their own jurisdictions.
In the next few years, with this pressure building up, the provinces will have three options: they could partially privatize health care because the federal government does not recognize the existence of a fiscal imbalance; they could try to reorganize their own spending and set aside all other priorities in Quebec and other provinces; or they could cut back on services. This is the stark reality. They either have to cut essential services, privatize, or find new sources of revenue.
I am happy that the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is no longer part of this debate, because he was talking nonsense. He even encouraged Quebec and the provinces to raise their taxes. One must have some rather strange ideas to say such things; to raise taxes within a context where competition between the Canadian provinces, the United States, and now the world, with the opening up of markets and free trade, is fundamental.
The federal government itself recognized this by having a 20% personal tax differential in Canada compared to the United States, these taxes had to be lowered to maintain some competitiveness and keep high quality managers. That the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs would encourage the governments of Quebec and of the Canadian provinces to raise their taxes is incredible and odious when the federal has surpluses coming out of its ears. To suggest raising taxes and sending the Quebec government and the provincial governments into a spiral of deficits, year after year, while the federal surplus continues to grow, is total nonsense.
If, to boot, they are federalists and they want the federation to work, there is a big problem. The main components of a federation are the provinces, and they are not even able to respect them. They think of themselves as the leaders of a unitary state, which they are not, unless they want to completely alter the Canadian constitution, which is another debate. But they should initiate this debate instead of acting in an indirect, deceitful and wishy-washy fashion by keeping the surpluses here and ignoring the fiscal imbalance, which is recognized by everyone.
It is so easy to prove this that I still cannot understand why the Minister of Finance would rise in the House and say that there is no problem. This is incredible.