Mr. Speaker, although I do not agree with everything the member said, I certainly was impressed with the way he presented his argument.
I listened intently to the argument and it seems to me that the member is still confusing fiscal imbalance with government policy. He made the statement that the federal government, whether it was good luck, good management or inaccurate forecasting, had a $9 billion surplus and it did not know what to do with it. The government, of course, paid down the debt, which I certainly support.
I want to point out to the hon. member, as he pointed out to the House, that the government has paid down approximately $60 million in debt over the last seven years. As anyone who has been here for a few years knows, when the previous government was in power at the end of 1993, debt was accumulating at the rate of $3.5 billion a month. We have seen what can happen when a government loses the fiscal and monetary policies at its disposal.
I want to point out to the hon. member that at present, and this is a fiscal imbalance, the accumulated debt of the federal government is $501 billion and the accumulated debt of all 10 provinces is $281 billion. That is a very serious imbalance, although I do not refer to it as a fiscal imbalance.
When the member talks about our policy, he makes the arguments, and they are good arguments, although I do not support them, that federal taxes are too high and that the government should not be as involved in some of the horizontal issues, such as health care, child care and infrastructure, as it is. However that does not support the proposition that the federal government should transfer large sums of money to the provinces.
Over the past five years we have had a situation in this country where the federal government has lowered taxes considerably for every person in Canada, including the people who reside in the province of Quebec. If the province of Quebec needed more money, as in any other Canadian province, why did it not just fill the vacuum by raising taxes so it could provide the services for the people who live in Quebec?