Madam Speaker, I am pleased to learn that the NDP has to support the bill, this bungled bill, this forced deal where the premiers were kicking and screaming.
It strikes me as more than passing strange that after three or four days of intense negotiation with the Prime Minister where we put into the formula stability, where we put into the formula predictability and where we put in enormous sums of money totalling $75 billion, including the health care, that somehow or another that deal was bungled and that they were kicking and screaming. It seems to me that somehow or another that insults the capabilities of all the premiers who were party to this agreement, that they were again just taken to the cleaners by the federal government.
If hon. members think that $10 billion this year, $10.9 billion next year and a 3.5% escalator is somehow or another getting taken to the cleaners and that this is a bad thing, then I suppose they would take the position of the hon. member that, somehow or another, when the Prime Minister finished with the health care deal of $41 billion and the equalization deal of $33 billion, he then turned to every premier in the room and said that he intended to enter into an arrangement with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia before these deals were completed, and that not one of them raised an objection to the Prime Minister's intention to address the particular concerns of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, their difficulties with their debt to GDP and their difficulties with a declining demographic pace.
I put it to hon. members that there was no bungling. This was not a forced deal. It was entered into by the partners in Confederation and there was no kicking and screaming. A deal is a deal is a deal and it was all entered into by adults.