Mr. Speaker, the essential part of the hon. member's statement has to do with the issue of taking non-renewable resources out of the equalization equation in order for it to get 100% of that benefit. That is the position that the government has acceded to, but it raises in turn a whole bunch of other very complicated questions.
The first question, where a province does not have non-renewable resources, is why should a manufacturing sector, for instance, in Ontario be penalized effectively for including in its fiscal capacity things such as manufacturing and a variety of other ways in which people generate fiscal capacity? It begs the essential question of what the basic intellectual argument is to remove renewables or non-renewables or property tax revenues or any one of the 33 elements in the fiscal measuring capacity out of the formula so that one particular jurisdiction is preferred over another jurisdiction. Either it is all in or it is all out.
I would ask the hon. member his basis for why people in Ontario should be penalized for having manufacturing included in the measurement of fiscal capacity?