Mr. Speaker, no, I am not proposing to do that. I am just recognizing the reality as it is. I think the member misspoke.
I find it a little ironic that the member would criticize the Ontario provincial government for downloading on to the municipalities when the finance minister, the current Prime Minister, was the ultimate downloader of all time.
If the member wants to talk about a fiscal imbalance, this is the fiscal imbalance: the federal government raises two-thirds of the revenues across Canada but provides one-third of the services. That is a fiscal imbalance. The fact is that the Liberal government in the mid-1990s downloaded everything on to the other two orders of government. That was the basic problem with the fiscal imbalance.
In terms of which order of government, which level should actually do child care, I have been very clear in saying it is a matter of provincial jurisdiction.
What the federal government ought to do is get its own house in order. It should deal with citizenship and immigration, get the border open to our beef and our softwood, repair our national defence, none of which the government is doing. It has failed miserably on every one of those counts. Instead it interferes into provincial jurisdiction. It interferes with municipalities. It should get its own house in order. It should leave these areas of social responsibility to the provinces, which can better deal with them.