I would like them to listen. I was polite and I listened.
There would be no need for equalization payments if the federal government had not been strangling us. That is the real problem. Health care was slashed for years. When the parliamentary secretary talks to me about manpower training, it took 15 years to negotiate an agreement. Negotiating agreements with the federal government takes a long time. It does not go quickly.
And so we have reason to be dubious. I say to you, “Stop strangling us financially” and you will see that we can survive much better than we are constrained to do now. We just get things in dribs and drabs and then they tell us we are getting equalization payments. We would greatly prefer not getting them.
It is our money; it is our income tax; those are our tax dollars we send to Ottawa. We want to take back what we need to live on and get what is owed us.
It is entirely untrue to say that what we are doing is not right. I think it is abominable that they say they are doing things properly, when it is perfectly clear that things do not work that way in practice.
Yes, there is interference. It is unacceptable because money is being wasted although we already have the programs in place. Give us some respect, and give us back the employment insurance fund that was stolen from the unemployed. We would like to have that $45 billion. We would know what to do with it.