Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the parliamentary secretary for his question. I have two or three quick answers for the parliamentary secretary.
In regard to the impossibility of ever making the members of the Bloc Québécois happy, I would simply point, as I said in my speech, to the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities calling for in-depth reform of the employment insurance system. The report was unanimous. If the government had had the courage to implement these measures, the Bloc Québécois would have been happy and would have voted in favour of such a bill. That is the first thing.
Second, regarding the agreement between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, we in the Bloc Québécois, in contrast to the Liberal Party, do not interfere in provincial affairs. We are on the federal level. This was a contract between two parties. If the parties want to renegotiate it, they should do so. However that may be, these are matters for Quebec and the provinces and we will not interfere in that.
Let us turn to the special agreements with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. As the parliamentary secretary knows very well, a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance, namely the Subcommittee on Fiscal Imbalance, is currently on a cross-Canada tour that will end soon. Allow me to draw a somewhat hasty conclusion in light of the various witnesses who have appeared: the equalization system has been completely perverted by this government , among other ways through special agreements. Equalization is supposed to be a matter of equity to ensure that the provinces can provide comparable services. So as they get richer, their equalization goes down. That is only natural.
These equity principles are called into question, though, by the agreements with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. These are agreements that completely upset the equalization system, which was already in difficulty as a result of the policies of this government.
Furthermore, we are now witnessing attempts to reach more special agreements, in particular with Saskatchewan and Ontario. Rather than trying to solve the problem piecemeal by signing agreements that only accentuate the inequities, why does the federal government not undertake an in-depth reform of the equalization system and solve the problem of the fiscal imbalance? That is the question.