Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary makes a point of repeating that many provincially elected representatives recognize the fiscal imbalance as a problem. And not only in Quebec. I can think of Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara, and of the tour I went on with the Subcommittee on Fiscal Imbalance, where there was this very broad consensus in almost every province we visited about the existence of a fiscal imbalance.
The worst part is that not only does this fiscal imbalance exist, but it is also turning into a political imbalance, where decisions made by the federal government have a very serious impact on how the various provincial states and Quebec are run. The members of the various legislative assemblies and the National Assembly are not the only ones to recognize the fiscal imbalance.
As far as I know, our colleague from Acadie—Bathurst—the name of his riding came back to me—is not an MLA; he is a federally elected representative. As far as I know, the Leader of the Opposition and our Conservative colleagues, who recognize the fiscal imbalance, are not MLAs. Clearly, we in the Bloc Québécois do recognize the fiscal imbalance. We may not always be in perfect agreement on how to resolve this very serious problem, but it must be agreed that there is a problem.
I will give the parliamentary secretary a quick example, and then come back to the phasing out of the corporate capital tax. At the time Bill C-43 was tabled, the federal government was planning to withdraw from that field to some extent. Shortly after, Quebec's finance minister tabled his budget and, in light of the direction the federal government was taking, also decided to reduce the capital tax, and raise the corporate tax rate slightly for larger corporations. All in all, this was intended to result in a tax reduction for corporations in Quebec.
The problem is that, by changing its mind now about the capital tax, the government is completely messing up Quebec's corporate tax strategy. That is what the fiscal imbalance is about. The federal government's decisions have a direct impact on legislation at other levels.