Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to address that. I am astounded to hear the depopulation figures for Nova Scotia. Recently I heard that for Cape Breton the number of people leaving is astounding. It is losing 10% of its population even in one year. They are seeing young people leave.
For New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, we are not seeing the infrastructure, the health care system and the post-secondary education system that we need. We are seeing young people who have to leave their province. The cost of our infrastructure is so high that our tuition fees are higher than they are anywhere else in the country. We are being penalized to live in the region. We are not seeing the same level of health care or post-secondary education and education available for our people as might be available in Ontario or Alberta.
That goes against the idea of our Constitution, the idea that we live in a Confederation where there is a reasonably equal access to all services that we deem acceptable for Canadians.
To base an equalization formula on population and at the same time not safeguard that the population can remain more or less stable in a region by sensitive economic policies for that region, regions where people want to live, we are setting them up for failure and we are setting up our families for the inability to maintain their lives and children in the communities that they love.
It is a tragedy that we are able to sit in this chamber and talk so clinically about this situation when in fact we are talking about Canadian families that want to build their lives in certain regions and are finding it impossible to do so.