Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am rather surprised by these comments from my Conservative colleague, since he just said it was a mistake for the provinces to abolish their upper houses. On the contrary, I think the provinces did so in a moment of great lucidity. My colleague did in fact say that they made a mistake. He said that, in Australia, only one province has eliminated its upper house and that, in the United States, only one state has done so, as though eliminating their upper houses was a mistake on the part of Canada's provinces.
I would not want to be in the position of the Americans or the Australians, given their way of doing things. I am happy the provinces abolished their upper houses. I am even more surprised by the fact that he compared power and the loss of state autonomy to Congress in the United States, saying that this would not be the case in Canada. On the contrary, this worries me, since that is exactly what the Conservative Party wants to do.
It is not true that the Conservative government wants to limit the federal spending power. We know this. In the Speech from the Throne, the Conservatives talked about shared-cost jurisdictions. Yet, they no longer exist. This means that they reserve the right to spend in all other jurisdictions. That worries me even more. I was against this bill before, and now I am opposed twice as much, after my Conservative colleague's speech.