Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech. There never has been nor can there ever be a fiscal imbalance. It is an intellectual conceit which has been perpetrated particularly by the Bloc Québécois in order to destabilize the fiscal discipline of the government.
The hon. member talks about provincial governments and the fiscal pressures that they are under. In British Columbia the NDP government ran up quite a debt. The voters decided that that was enough and replaced them with a Liberal government to deal with the debt. In Ontario the provincial Conservatives ran up quite a debt, all the time pretending to be fiscally responsible. The voters decided to replace them with a Liberal government. In Quebec the PQ ran up a huge debt and the voters decided to replace it with a Liberal government. It seems to me that on some level or another the voters have spoken.
Fiscal discipline, which this government has taken upon itself since 1993, is a good thing. Possibly fiscal discipline should apply to some of the other provinces. For instance, members will be interested to know that provinces have access to personal income taxes just like the federal government does. It is the same thing with corporate income taxes. They have access to that kind of a tax just as the federal government does. It is the same thing with sales taxes and payroll taxes. Uniquely, provinces have access to resource revenues, to gaming and liquor profits and to property taxes, none of which are available to the federal government.
At one point the federal government generated about 16% of revenues vis-à-vis GDP. That was back in 1993. At that point it was about 19% for the provincial governments. At this point it is now 17%, so the provinces have access to 17% of the nation's GDP, going from 19% to 17%. Roughly, one point is $12 billion, so in some manner or another the provinces have walked away from about $24 billion worth of revenues. Then they have the unmitigated gall to come to the federal government and say that they have not been fiscally disciplined and because the federal government has been, they want to take its money. I do not know, but It seems to me that that underlies the premise of the hon. member's speech.
I put it to her that in there is no fiscal imbalance. It is an intellectual conceit. If the provinces were more fiscally disciplined, we would not be having this debate.