Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question. I can understand him wanting to make a speech on the finances of the nation thinking that perhaps the position of finance minister might be available again very soon, considering that the finance minister holds so many different positions. My understanding is that his caucus was all over the map on this issue and on many other issues in the last few days so he should be used to it.
He talked about how well the economy is doing, and I have to agree, but it seems strange that the Prime Minister would fire the finance minister under those kinds of circumstances if that is the case.
If we look at it in the bigger light of how we are doing internationally and how we are doing against our major trading partner, the United States, and he raised these issues, the facts of the matter are that we still have the highest personal income taxes in the G-7, we have only 80% of the productivity of the United States and our standard of living is only 70% of that of the United States. This has been happening during the time that the Liberal government has been in power, 1993 to 1997.
I guess the linkage he is making is that the government should recover the money from the provinces that have even more money, but I am suggesting this: What is the government's record in spending this money once it has it? I thought I made a fairly clear point that there has been a tremendous amount of waste in the government. It has happened through patronage projects. We have seen it for months in the House. It is raised almost every day with a new scandal about waste of taxpayers' money. As well, I have suggested that government priorities are all wrong with things like corporate statism and corporate welfare. Money that hardworking Canadians struggle to raise is going to big corporations.
The point I was raising is that yes, we could take the approach the member talks about and we could recover the money from the provinces. That is one approach we could use, but as I put it, that to me seems to be a confrontational approach. The federal government made the error, not just in one year but for almost 10 years, year after year. The provinces have spent the money, so they are going to be put in the position that they somehow have to recover it. In the case of Ontario $2.5 billion would have to be paid back. What are their options? That is what I was pointing out to the hon. member. What are their options? Are they going to raise taxes to do it or are they going to cut program spending?
In the case of Manitoba the premier has told us that money has long since been spent on social programs, education, health and building roads in the province. Does the federal government want the province of Manitoba to pay that back and to suddenly have to come up with some new taxes in order to do so? I think that is the wrong approach.
The Liberal government does not have a good record in provincial-federal relations. Now is the time for it to help clear the air. It could say “We made a mistake, it is our mistake, and we recognize that we could get it back but there is still only one taxpayer out there”. While the government is at it, maybe it could also admit that it does not have a very good record in spending public money to begin with. We see numerous examples of that in the House almost every day.
I think that the better approach, and our party supports it, is to forgive the overpayment, clean up the problem so it does not happen again and move on.