Mr. Speaker, I find it very enlightening to hear my colleague opposite. I would like to ask her a few questions because I think that we do not have the same understanding of how the economy works.
Over the last five or six years, this government has increased the number of public service employees by 59,000. Talking about the fiscal imbalance, she said that increasing the number of public service employees in a particular region would solve this problem. We believe that a better way of dealing with the fiscal imbalance would be to stop stepping on each other's toes and to give the money back to the provinces in their areas of jurisdiction.
I find it hard to believe that people such as the member would say that we need to have more offices, more limousines and more ministers to solve the issues with which the provinces and the regions are struggling. That is simply not true. The first thing that needs to be done is to respect provincial jurisdictions and to give the money back to the authorities responsible for dealing with these issues. As my colleagues were saying, regional economic development requires regional consensus. The federal government cannot tell us what to do. One just has to watch the Gomery commission to understand that there are no lessons to be learned from the federal government.
Can the member explain to me how increasing the number of federal public service employees by 59,000 and increasing the number of offices would solve the fiscal imbalance? I would like her to elaborate on that.