Madam Speaker, as an introduction to my question, I will quote a statement made by a member in the House and with which I agree entirely:
Make your own country. Concentrate all powers in Ottawa. Form an economic union that will turn your provincial governments into municipal governments. Go ahead, but don't expect us to get involved.
These words were spoken by the member for Outremont on February 6, 1992, and I fully agree with him.
What we witnessed the day before yesterday was an attempt to transform provincial governments into large municipalities. The lack of agreement on the issue of equalization illustrates this point. What the federal government and in particular the current Prime Minister and his Liberal government prefer to do is deliver federal equalization transfers a drop at a time.
I would also remind the member for Outremont, the Minister of Transport, of the statement made by Mr. Séguin—who does not seem to approve of what M. Pratte said in La Presse : “The federal government is thirsting after our blood, like Dracula.” And he went on to say: “The next time, I will fill up my suitcase with garlic before I come”, to avoid seeing his own blood and the blood of Quebeckers being sucked up by this government.
I would like to know what the transport minister and member for Outremont thinks about the fact that each Quebecker receives three times less in equalization payments than the people of the Atlantic provinces, less than the people of Manitoba, and less than the people of Saskatchewan. I would like to know what he thinks about the fact that, on average, 25% of the Canadian provinces' revenues come from federal transfers, while only 23% of Quebec's revenues come from federal transfers. I would like to know what he thinks about the fact that there are 12 public servants for 1,000 Ontarians, but only 10 for 1,000 Quebeckers, which represents a loss of 70,000 jobs in the federal public service for Quebec. That represents a 93% advantage for Ontario. All these facts amount to a fiscal imbalance in Quebec, an economic imbalance that the federal system is not helping us resolve.
I would like to ask him this. In the amendment to the amendment to the throne speech put forward by the Bloc Québécois, instead of writing that the federal government committed to alleviate “the financial pressures some call the fiscal imbalance”, would it not have been better to write that the federal government should address the fiscal imbalance which the Liberal Party of Canada is the only one to call financial pressures? In the House, the Conservative members, the Bloc Québécois members as well as the New Democrat members all agree on one thing: the existence of a fiscal imbalance, which means that the money is in Ottawa while the needs are in the provinces.
In the Quebec National Assembly, the Liberal Party of Quebec, the Parti Québécois and the Action démocratique all agree on the existence of a fiscal imbalance. Can the member explain why the federal Liberals are the only ones who believe it does not exist?