Mr. Speaker, I would first like to make some comments about the Prime Minister. When he was in Newfoundland and Labrador, he made a solemn commitment to the people that the government would remove non-renewable resources form that formula, and a bunch of huffing and puffing went with it. When he came to Saskatchewan, which has the same sort of problem, perhaps even more serious than Newfoundland and Labrador, during the election campaign, he and his finance minister said that this was something the government would have to study. However, there were no details committed at all.
That election campaign was full of those kinds of promises. They would go to one area and promise one thing, then go to another area and not even say anything remotely close to the same thing. The one difference is he had a chance to get Liberal MPs elected in Newfoundland and Labrador. However, in Saskatchewan there was not a light at either end of the tunnel in 13 out of 14 ridings. Why would they make that kind of promise in Saskatchewan. When the election was over, he broke his promises.
I have a comment that I want to make. The godfather of equalization payments is a professor from the U.S. by the name of Buchanan. Mr. Trudeau employed his wisdom to set up regional development and to come in with these ideas of equalization. He now is a huge critic of these Canadian programs, He has said that they have been a failure. He points to a couple of very good examples.
In 1986 Ireland had an unemployment rate of 17% and its per capita income was half of the Canadian standard. Today, Ireland has a 4% unemployment rate. People are going to Ireland from all over the world and investing there. Its standard of living is not only higher than Canada's, it is well above the EU average.
Ireland went a totally different way than what we did in this country. Our have not provinces are still the same have not provinces that we had when Mr. Trudeau thought this was such a great idea.
Another example that he uses is the State of Georgia. In 1970 the State of Georgia had a standard of living which was 70% of the U.S. average. Birmingham, Alabama was a bigger city than Atlanta, Georgia. Today Georgia has a standard of living which is 15% above the national average and Atlanta is the hub of the entire U.S. southeast. It is the major centre of that area and a far bigger place than Birmingham, Alabama.
Those sorts of things are not happening here.The Irish example and the Georgia example are not happening in Saskatchewan. Mr. Buchanan has said that his own proposals for equalization and regional development have failed Canada. The same provinces that were haves when he proposed this are still the have provinces and the have nots provinces are still the have nots. His argument is that rather than even trying to converge or get closer to the haves, the gap in many ways is wider.
I guess this is something the Liberal government, which hatched all these programs, has failed to ever address. Maybe at some point in this country's history we will have to seriously re-evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and see if there is not a new and better way of doing things, and maybe listen to people like Mr. Buchanan.