Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for reading what was given to him, but let me say to him that he should have checked it out beforehand because what he said is certainly not the facts.
Toward the end he talked about the province looking for equalization after it goes above and beyond the fiscal capacity of Ontario. That is not the case. We have always said that when we reach the five province standard, when we are looked upon as being equal, we do not want equalization, thank you. We want to be a contributing partner in Confederation, but we do not want the federal government taking back our share of our money.
We are not looking for 100% of all the revenues from the development, as some people think. We are looking for 100% of our share which is less than 50% of the total revenue. When we reach the average capacity, we do not want equalization. We are saying, do to us what the government did to Alberta. Give us the opportunity to use our own revenues until we reach that fiscal capacity. Equalization would disappear and the revenues would continue to flow.
Progress has been made, the parliamentary secretary said. The premiers from both provinces met with the Prime Minister. It was a cozy meeting. They turned it over to the finance ministers and they had a meeting. Everyone thought that everyone understood each other. Then they did the unpardonable thing by turning it over to the officials. From what I know, we are no further ahead. Hopefully things will work out because if not, the war has just begun.