Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to address this issue and thank my friend from the Bloc for his comments. Obviously, the Conservative Party also shares his concerns about the fiscal imbalance. We were quite pleased to participate in the hearings on fiscal imbalance and hope that the government will come to understand that this is not some myth. This really is a truly serious problem.
However, I want to get to the guts of the motion and get some feedback from the member regarding the issue of non-renewable natural resources, and whether or not they should actually be included in the equalization formula.
I want to make the case again for why they should not be included. I trust my friend understands that if non-renewable natural resources are included in the equalization formula, it means that we have a situation where for every dollar that is produced in revenue from these non-renewable resources basically the same amount of money is clawed back through equalization. This means that these resources should be used to help a province get permanently on its feet, build infrastructure, and build capacity for the future. When the day comes when those resources will be gone, all that money will be lost.
Can my friend understand why that is important to provinces who have lots of those types of resources, but maybe not a lot of renewable resources? If he can understand that, why can he not come to support what we are proposing today?