Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.
That is the crux of the problem in terms of funding all the mandates of the provinces and Quebec. It is not right that the federal government should collect so much money that it can not only assume those responsibilities that are constitutionally its own, but that it should also have the flexibility to transfer funds to the provinces, including Quebec. That indicates that over the years, the federal government has taken a share of the tax base that is much bigger than its responsibilities. It is the same taxpayer who pays both levels. That is what we call fiscal imbalance.
If the situation were corrected, there would be no more transfers from the federal government to the provinces and to Quebec in their fields of jurisdiction. They would have the financial independence to assume those responsibilities through the taxes they collected.
At the moment, the problem is that we cannot increase taxes in Quebec, so long as the federal government does not withdraw from the tax base. As part of a final settlement of the fiscal imbalance, we would like to see the Government of Quebec—and I would hope other provinces do the same thing—negotiate, for example, the withdrawal of the federal government from the GST or the return of some tax points to the Government of Quebec. Let us do away with the transfers by the federal government for health and post-secondary education, for social assistance programs and for a number of other responsibilities that are under exclusive provincial jurisdiction. The Government of Quebec would then be accountable to the only people it should answer to, the residents of Quebec.