Mr. Speaker, equalization is one of the most essential and important programs to build a strong economic union and a strong federation in this country.
Our government, very courageously, made a step forward to reform equalization, something that the previous government never had the guts or the courage to do.
This is an important program to build a strong federation, to ensure that, as I would say most simply, a grandmother in Alberta and a grandmother in Newfoundland can have access to comparably the same level of public services that they need when living across the country from one another. To do that, we needed to re-examine the equalization formula.
We chose to look at the recommendations from an independent panel of experts chaired by one of the most highly respected people that deal with this issue. This panel of experts, I would like to remind the member, was struck by the former government.
What came out of that report were recommendations that are principled and that bring, we believe very strongly as do many experts, a principled long term solution to the problems that we previously saw in equalization. This is something that will benefit all Canadians from coast to coast, particularly, in terms of our respect for the offshore accords, the people of the Atlantic regions.