Mr. Speaker, he really has three questions. The first is on the formula and whether it will be subject to politics. I would like to say that nothing is subject to politics around here, but we all know that is not true. I would draw the hon. member's attention to proposed section 4.1 of the bill, which pretty well circumscribes the ability of any level of government to play politics, so to speak, with this amount of money. On fiscal equalization payments, paragraph 4.1(1)(a) states:
--for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2005, shall equal $10.9 billion;
That does not say “may be $10.9 billion” or “if we feel like it, it is $10.9 billion”. It is $10.9 billion.
The next paragraph states:
--for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2006, shall equal the product attained by multiplying $10.9 billion by 1.035;
For the hon. member and myself, let me say that this means a 3.5% increase. Again, I do not see where we could play politics with that amount of money.
Just to bring further clarity and further certainty to this, proposed subsection 2 actually sets out the specific amounts of money:
The fiscal equalization payment referred to in paragraph (1)(a) shall be allocated to the provinces as follows:
(a) to Quebec, $4,798,070,000;
Plus another $70 million is thrown in there. These are very large numbers and I am not used to reading numbers this size. For Nova Scotia, there $1,343,527,000, for New Brunswick, $1,347,993,000, and this subsection goes on and lists each of the equalization receiving provinces. For the hon. member opposite, who is from British Columbia, that number is $589,698,000.
Thus, on his first question, I cannot see it, even if there were a desire to play politics with the amount of money. The floor is set, the ceiling is set, and we will take advice as to the distribution among the equalization receiving provinces.
As to the natural resources issue, as I said at the beginning of my speech and should have said at the end of the speech, that equalization has nothing to do with the current discussions with respect to the natural resource sector. That will be the subject of another debate.
As to our website transparency, et cetera, I am not familiar with the Department of Finance website, but I think it is fairly good from what I am told. The bill is presumably posted on the website and these calculations presumably exist on the website, so it would be fairly transparent and readily calculable for a province or an individual Canadian to calculate how much money would be received by a province in any given year.
I hope I have answered the hon. member's questions.