Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for staying around this evening. Quite often when we have these discussions on questions, the ministers send in their parliamentary secretaries or somebody else to read a prepared speech. They read the prepared comeback to my comeback and most of the time it is not even related. I want to thank the minister for staying around for this very important issue because it is important to him and it is important to us.
Having said that, let me say to him that there is something wrong here. What the Minister of Natural Resources said, the individual who should be the person in charge of all of this, does not jibe with what the Minister of Finance was saying. Unfortunately, the deal made between the Prime Minister and the Premier of Newfoundland was not in writing. We do not have anything with which to compare. However, we do have the letters from the Premier of Newfoundland which undoubtedly must have been accepted by government.
The government did not say it would not accept it until two days before an imposed deadline, imposed by the Prime Minister by the way. The letter from the Minister of Finance really did not say what the Minister of Natural Resources was saying. They talked about the cap, they talked about deadlines, and they talked about fiscal capacity of other provinces, so somewhere in between there lies the truth. For the minister's sake, for my sake, and for the sake of the people in our great province, we hope we find it, and find it very soon.