Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for the first half of his speech at least, which I thought was on topic and raised some very interesting points. The second half burned a lot of time, obviously for the folks at home.
On the question of the 10 province formula, I agree with this. I think there are good things to consider in that which would have a positive effect for some of the provinces that have less. We should not use the term have not. I think it is better to say have less, they have potential that is yet to be developed.
The problem is that we have agreements from all provinces, it seems, if there is no cost to all provinces. If it is going to be true equalization then there probably has to be redistribution of wealth from provinces that have a lot to those which have less. If it was a cost sharing formula between the federal and the provincial governments, that everyone puts in, and the provinces agreed on the redistribution formula, I think it would take care of all that.
Does the member think there would still be agreement among all the provinces and would those with wealth participate?
The other question is the famous clawback provision on the provinces as they develop their resource sector and receive less equalization using the general formula. The Atlantic accord in the case of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which is favourable as opposed to all on land industries, I think does help the Atlantic provinces.
I do not know if all the provinces agree with that. I watched the premier of New Brunswick, my province, and he did not agree with it. When he spoke to Klein in Alberta, Klein said, “Of course I agree with you. Get a constitutional amendment”, which I thought was like saying, “Go fly a kite”. It did not seem to me to be a true agreement on the proposal. Constitutional amendments are not that easy to get.
I wonder why those provinces that raise that do it bilaterally with the federal government. They talk about it but do not bring it to the table when the provinces are there, as they are now. They have had over 40 meetings negotiating the equalization formula. Why is it not part of the repertoire? Is it that they do not find the same amount of cooperation from the 10 provinces?
Finally, my last question is on EI. I do not think the federal government should make any apologies for having a surplus in the EI account. We all know that there is no EI fund. It should be noted that the rates paid by business and individuals to that fund have been steadily decreasing. A surplus happens because jobs have been created. Less people are drawing from it. More people are contributing to it. That creates wealth. That creates investment.
That is what the member was speaking about earlier. I wonder if he would recognize that.