Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the discussion about the fiscal imbalance. With all due respect, I think my colleague is misstating the principle.
He says that cumulative provincial revenues are roughly the same as cumulative federal revenues. I do not think the fiscal imbalance is about that. When we look at the different levels of government in Canada, and I would like to introduce municipal government as well, we actually have three levels of government. When people talk about the fiscal imbalance they are saying that each of those three levels of government have tax levers available to them and each of them have responsibilities for things for which they need to pay.
As time goes by there seems to be a mismatch between their taxing powers, not in the taxing powers of other levels of government. That is not the comparison. The comparison is between the taxing powers they have and their funding responsibilities.
I will take my home province of Ontario as an example. There are more than 440 municipalities in Ontario. All of them are under a crunch. All of them are complaining that they do not have access to sufficient revenue to pay for the services they need to provide locally. These municipalities are looking to the province and saying that there is a fiscal imbalance between the provincial and municipal government, which is similar to the same discussion that is going on between the provinces and the federal government.
We are not looking at the revenue generating capacities of the three levels of government to see whether there is an imbalance. We are looking on the other side. We are saying that the federal government is the only level of government that seems to spend time sitting around thinking up new ways to spend money, while provincial governments of all parties are having a hard time balancing their books. I presume leaders of all levels are having a problem. The fiscal imbalance is between the money the federal government raises and the responsibilities it has compared to the responsibilities of the provinces.
The fact that neither the local nor provincial governments are stepping into federal jurisdiction, but the federal government is doing it to the provinces is proof positive. I would like to hear the member's comment on that.