Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the enlightening speech by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois and was sympathetic to the points he raised from an intergovernmental point of view.
Speaking on behalf of the province of Manitoba, does the member share my view that one of the most serious problems with the current equalization strategy is the government's persistent dishonesty in estimating budgetary surpluses from year to year and the difficulty that provinces have in doing any long range planning if they cannot believe the numbers they are told by their own minister of finance of the federal government as to what they might be able to expect at year end in terms of transfer payments to the provinces?
Does he find in his own home province of Quebec that it is very difficult to do any long range planning without knowing whether there is stable core funding coming from the federal government? Would he agree that something has to be done about the estimating process so that we know what the surplus will be from year to year?