Mr. Speaker, I have to take issue with the member for Saint John and his comments with respect to fiscal federalism. He mentioned both the government's plan in this budget to address equalization and to address other major fiscal federal transfers, and I have to disagree with him on this.
When our government took power in February of last year, the previous government left us with a mess with respect to equalization. Equalization for decades had been run on a principle based approach until the previous government took power. That previous government completely took apart the equalization formula and we were left with the difficult job of trying to put together a new formula that would apply consistently across the country.
The previous government signed the Atlantic accord, with which we agree. It also signed the Canada-Ontario agreement in May 2005. The problem with those agreements is the way in which they were done. They were done in isolation from the rest of the other seven provinces that were not party to those agreements. As a result, the previous government created a situation where equalization was not done on a principle based approach and we were left with the difficult job of trying to disentangle that mess. That is exactly what the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have done in the present budget.