Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way thinks that people have different views. We would love to be a nation, to have all our instruments of development and to take care of all that. Unfortunately, I do not think that Quebeckers would benefit from an increase in their deficit or an end put to the balanced budgets in Quebec, because they have chosen, without any discussion about it, to apply the whole surplus to the debt. We are not against the idea of applying part of the federal surplus to the debt, but we should first know how big it is.
We know the scope of these surpluses. My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, our finance critic, has for a few years now, been able to forecast the surpluses, to within 10%. We now know that surpluses are being accumulated after two quarters. It is a fact. It cannot be denied.
I come from the community and housing sector. In 1993, the Minister of Finance, who is our current Prime Minister, cut all funding for social housing. The employment insurance surplus was stolen. The deficits were transferred to the provinces. Was all that done to slightly reduce the debt of the federal government? No. This surplus was not obtained at the expense of efficiency and respect for the minister's own qualifications, but at the expense of the unemployed and the people in need of housing, on the backs of the provinces, at the expense of their responsibilities. It is totally shameful. I feel that we must correct that.
Year after year, we give in under this kind of arguments. I think that we are going nowhere with that. I abhor this government's self-satisfaction and the fact that it is not in touch with the reality of Canadians and the needs of the people in Quebec and the other provinces.
I think that the government must recognize what everybody sees, that is, the existence of an incredible fiscal imbalance and the fact that there are never any discussion on the use of hidden surpluses. All that discourages people about politics. I have an extremely difficult time accepting the confusion between the work done by opposition MPs or by honest Bloc Quebecois members and what the government is doing. Often, were are put in the same bag as politicians, who go from cynicism to cynicism and refuse to admit a reality obvious to all economists, to all the people who have to pay their rent and to all low-income workers from Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. There is a fiscal imbalance, which an arrogant government refuses to distribute. Instead, it continues to misspend and mismanage and, above all, to steal its brother's toys.