Mr. Speaker, obviously my learned friend has missed the point of my argument. There are certain imbalances in the country and they are, by and large, horizontal imbalances. Canada, as everyone is aware, is a very large country and we have different provinces. Things change over time. We have seen this with Alberta.
However, the job, duty and the role of the federal government is to provide a system where every Canadian is basically, and there will always be some inequities, given the opportunity to have essential services and reasonably comparable levels of taxation. That is what the federal government has tried to do.
Persons living in Newfoundland and Labrador or in B.C. are entitled to the old age security. Everything is the same. The equalization program tries to, on a horizontal basis, level out some of these imbalances that do exist. The motion basically says that we should transfer a lot of money from the federal government to the provincial governments so that the provincial governments can do with the money as they see fit.