Mr. Speaker, I had a discussion with Premier Hamm of Nova Scotia a few days ago. He said that he sure was glad that he does not live next to Alberta. A huge problem for Saskatchewan is that even if it could find a way to reduce some of its taxes which are not competitive with Alberta's, the equalization plan would be right there to club it over the head for doing it.
The payback was a one time thing. I agree with that. It was a good thing, but I remind the Minister of Finance that the federal government had clawed back things such as the sale of crown leases at the rate of 240%. This was an adjustment for some of the gross inequities that I think any fair-minded Canadian would realize is just wrong. It is a one shot deal. It is not like the Atlantic accord, which is a more permanent solution to the whole problem.
Quite often in question period the Minister of Finance refers to the Grant Devine regime. I want to put something in perspective. I remember 1981 and 1982. Marc Lalonde was the minister of energy. He forecast $100 a barrel for oil in this country. He painted a rosy picture. It was $40 a barrel then, which would be about $80 a barrel now. The prospects were never ending; Saskatchewan was going to be a rich province forever and a day. It was only a matter of time before those things collapsed. Grain prices collapsed and interest rates were 19%.
I am not trying to defend the Devine government. The member opposite knows that I was never an enthusiastic supporter of the direction of the Devine regime, but I am pointing out that there are a whole lot of things that happened in Saskatchewan in the 1980s.
Anybody governing that province would have had a very daunting task. I think the Minister of Finance was a member of the provincial legislature at that time and was well aware of a lot of the problems. Most people would say that the national energy program itself extracted close to $2 billion out of the Saskatchewan economy in those times as well, which was not a good thing.
I wanted to put some fairness into this. Surely the Minister of Finance is not saying that equalization should punish provinces because they do not agree with a government they may have had in the past. Should we punish Quebec because we did not like the Duplessis government back in the 1950s or 1960s? I do not understand the argument.
The equalization formula should measure a province's current fiscal capacity and try to meet the intent of the Constitution. Making reference to some government in the 1980s and saying to a province that it is not entitled to equalization because one did not agree with its politics back then is a poor argument and quite honestly, an unfair one.
I do not want to start pointing fingers at other provinces saying that I did not like the NDP government in B.C. at a different time or a government in another province. I do not see how that serves this debate. I wanted to bring that to the attention of the Minister of Finance because I think his argument is flawed.