Mr. Speaker, this is not a balanced approach that we are being presented with today. It is so little balanced it is Kafkaesque. People are paying too much income tax and other taxes to the federal government. We are creating surpluses year after year. Where is the balance in this?
With this bill, public servants receive the money, immediately convert it into a cheque, and send that cheque back to the taxpayers. Balanced? This is totally unbalanced. If they admit that there are structural surpluses, that is because people pay too much income tax to the federal government. So we need to have a redefinition of the fields of taxation. That is what we have been asking for from the start.
This is not the first time this has happened in the history of this country. In 1964, Mr. Pearson and Mr. Lesage sat down together at the Quebec conference. Both were very intelligent. They agreed at that time that, in order to finance new initiatives—notably in education—the Government of Quebec needed of fiscal resources. This was offered to the other provinces as well, but only the government of Quebec took advantage. So there was a transfer of tax points to finance post-secondary education, among other things.
Prior to 1995, the agreement permitted three separate transfers for the Canada Social Transfer. This was before the Prime Minister made his savage cuts. This did not just come out of the blue. It was a federal-provincial agreement, in fields of Quebec jurisdiction, of course, but it was an agreement to transfer money from the federal government to Quebec. There was no question of the federal government interfering in education, social assistance or support to the most disadvantaged families: it was an agreement to transfer financial resources.
We have fallen from 50% to less than 18% in a few years. This has destabilized everybody. The result has been that the governments of Quebec and the other provinces have not been able to meet their core mandates. It is the Liberals who have destabilized the public finances of Quebec, and even of Ontario, which is in difficulty at the moment. Virtually the only province in this country with no problems is Alberta.
So don’t tell us that this is balanced. Don’t tell us we are saying the opposite. We have never said the opposite. If there is one consistent party in this Parliament, it is surely us.