Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton for his comments on this issue. I have to agree with him that I am not an accountant either.
I want to ask him, as a member of parliament for Nova Scotia such as I am myself, how he thinks that we can find ways of making equalization payments more fair for provinces such as our own and to deal with some crises we are facing in terms of health care and education.
I would say that in terms of health care we know that we have higher rates of cancer. The member knows that himself from his own experience in Cape Breton. Our province in fact does have a special need in terms of its health care issues.
We also have a special need in terms of our special education issues. We are presently $23 million short of what is required to provide special education services in the province. I see on a daily basis the impact of lack of resources on our school system, on our ability to make the whole idea of inclusion work in the schools.
As a member of parliament for Nova Scotia what I see is that we do have a two tier system of health care and education by virtue of the fact that we do not have the resources to provide the same high quality level of service for all Nova Scotians.
Again, in light of this debate we are having today around the issue of overpayment, I will ask him, as a member of the government, about this. He mentioned that the calculation of equalization is and will be affected by this issue. How can we rethink the whole issue of equalization for have not provinces such as Nova Scotia and some other Atlantic provinces?