Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his relevant question. Indeed, this is a serious problem and, once, again, as with the fiscal imbalance, everybody agrees.
Concerning the calculation of equalization, it should, first all, be done on the basis of the 10 provinces rather than of 5 of them. I have with me some information that might be of use to my colleague.
The assessment done by the federal government to arrive at the amounts given at the equalization meeting is whimsical. The federal government considers $9.510 billion its basic contribution, because it appears in the budget for 2004, only for the year 2004-05. In addition, the federal government then considers any discrepancy from that amount as new money, whereas as early as 2005-06, it adds $1.390 billion to that base—what it calls a base—to bring the total amount to $10.9 billion. By taking the difference year after year and by considering that to be a contribution—we are talking from $1.39 billion in 2005-06 to $4.8 billion in 2013-14—the federal government ends up saying that it will increase its contribution by $28.7 billion over the next 10 years.
There is a hitch, however. That is because a group of independent experts was created whose role it is to examine how the statutory equalization payments should be divided among provinces in 2006-07 and beyond. However, the Prime Minister has not seized the opportunity offered by the conference to address the fiscal imbalance as a whole and, also, we know, he did not have the political will to meet the needs of the public. He chose instead to meet the needs of his caucus, which was accusing him of having already given too much, and to continue with the financial strangulation of Quebec and the provinces caused by fiscal imbalance.