Mr. Speaker, after his excellent set of remarks, I would ask the member to acknowledge that it is very easy for the government to list a whole bunch of government expenditures flowing into the provinces. In fairness to everyone around here and all taxpayers, we have a budget of a couple of hundred billion dollars and there is a lot of money moving around the country being spent by the federal government in transfers, equalization and other things.
The nub of the issue here is this. Would he not agree that it is the letdown that people in several provinces feel now as a result of the decision by the government to, if not renege totally on some of the previous federal-provincial agreements, attempt to do an end run around them and remove the benefits that had been earlier negotiated and signed with the federal government?