Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Cumberland—Colchester for his excellent comments, particularly when he indicated that if this were to come to pass in regard to moneys being collected from the provinces, money should be returned not only to the provinces but to other individuals, certainly with respect to EI. I never thought about that but there are literally tens of billions of dollars that have been taken out of the pockets of his constituents and my constituents that should be returned if this is the kind of philosophy that now is going to be carried on by the government.
However, first I would like to thank the Canadian Alliance for bringing forward the motion. I do support it, coming from the province of Manitoba. It is an excellent vehicle and opportunity for me as well as others to put forward our position with respect to this overpayment to the provincial governments of Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario in particular and how the government is going to resolve the problem.
I would also like to say that in a previous life I did have an opportunity to deal with budgets. On the municipal side, those budgets were very dependent upon provincial budgets. There were grants that were given to the municipalities and we waited for those grants and those dollars flowed. Once we received those dollars, we spent them on services for our own constituents.
The same is true with the provincial governments. They depend on the federal government, in some cases through their equalization and transfer payments, to be able to make up their budgets and put forward those dollars, through CHST for example, into services provided for their constituents. This is exactly what the province of Manitoba did. From 1993 until now, it has been putting those dollars it has been receiving into services for its constituents, into health care, education, social services, highways, you name it. Provincial governments are responsible for a lot of those services and now suddenly the federal government is suggesting that because of the 1993-99 overpayment, there has to be a payback.
It is nice to have Manitoba finally lumped into being a have province, Alberta and Ontario being the have provinces. Unfortunately, Manitoba being not quite as fiscally fortunate as to have the resources of Alberta and Ontario, we have in the past been seen as a have not province. That does not mean defeatist. It simply means that we do not have the resources that the other provinces have and we do depend on that equalization, but that is the cornerstone of our federation. That is the cornerstone of Canada: that we as citizens share and that we share with other provinces, including Manitoba, so that we can have similar services in all our areas.
The province of Manitoba brought this to the attention of the federal government a number of years ago. The federal government continued, right through this government from 1993 to 1999, not to assess the proper capital taxes on mutual fund trusts. In fact, Manitoba currently has a cost associated to it of $408 million. As the member for Winnipeg Centre indicated, however, over the other years that has amounted to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $700 million.
A comment was made by, I believe, the Minister of National Revenue. She stated:
The error doesn't affect taxpayers...because it was a government-to-government transfer of personal income taxes it collected on the provinces' behalf.
Basically she is saying that because it is province to province there is really no impact.
There is a substantial impact. When those dollars already have been spent and now are being calculated and recharged to that province, my province suffers because we do not have the ability to put forward those revenues in any other way, shape or form to support those services. So when the minister of revenue says that I take great exception to it, because it is not just province to province, it is the people, the taxpayers of that province, who ultimately are going to be impacted.
By the way, I will speak on behalf of my province of Manitoba. There are 99 members of parliament on that side of the House who come from Ontario. Ontario will be assessed somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion. As my colleague from Cumberland--Colchester would say, it will be 2.8 thousand thousands--