Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech. I have always been interested in what we can do to keep the family of Canadian provinces together. I personally think that our equalization plan is very important to the country. It is important, not only to the receiving provinces but also to the contributing provinces so that all Canadians can have an equal level of services at a comparable level of taxation. This was mentioned throughout the member's speech.
The member's last statement about there being a solution to the problem if the provinces could be on their own rather confused me. I happen to have on my computer a copy of the major equalization payment transfers over the years from 1980. Unfortunately I have not updated it in the last four years. The total transfers every year from 1980 go from $5 billion to $6 billion to $7 billion. By the time we reached 1999 the amounts went from $11 billion to $11.6 billion to $12 billion and then to $10 billion. In the 20 years that I have kept track of this, net transfers to the province of Quebec were $178 billion, a total of 31% of all of the transfers in Canada, although it has only 25% of the population. I think we have been very fair with Quebec.
I would like the member to seriously rethink the fact that if Quebec were to go on its own there would be a net loss in view of the total number of transfers that it has received from the country over the years.