Madam Speaker, I was in the provincial legislature for 13 years. I go back to the early nineties when the government of the day was NDP. I sat there as a member and watched while the NDP government of the day did nothing but criticize the Conservative government under Brian Mulroney for the same thing. In fact, I went on to become Speaker and some members in the NDP used to remind me that I used to call what they were doing whining. That government went out in 1995 and in came the Conservative government, which did the same thing, complained about the Liberal government there.
When I look back on it, the Ontario government had a program called who does what, where it said that it would be revenue neutral but that we had to find 4%. The caucus used to laugh at that. They have what they call the MUSH sector: municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals. In Ontario, both the NDP government and the Conservative government had to cut those sectors dramatically. So everybody passed them down.
Is it not a pastime in this country for one level of government to blame all of the evils on another level of government, and that includes the four levels because we have regional government in my area? The local governments blame the provinces and the provinces blame the federal government. Quite frankly, when there is a fiscal problem like that, all governments have to make the tough choices.
Therefore is it not true that every government of every political stripe has complained about the federal government of every political stripe not having enough money?