Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the member's speech. He certainly has been very crafty in talking about issues that he wants to talk about but not talking about the benefits of the budget, certainly the benefits for the people of Nova Scotia and in fact for people in all parts of Canada. These benefits are significant. I know that ultimately the member supports them, but for partisan reasons he cannot.
I want to address one issue with the member. He talked about equalization. I want to ask him whether equalization inherently means equal, or whether equalization inherently means that some regions should be better off than others and supported in such a manner by the federal government.
Ultimately, here is what the Liberal Party is missing. When the Liberal Party was in government it always spoke about less being more. In fact, it would give less to the provinces but talk about how much more it was doing, which was impossible. In this budget this government is providing more money. It is providing more money to Nova Scotia and to every single province and territory, which means more capacity for all provinces and more money for health care and infrastructure. More is more.
Why is the member not supporting this? It is more money for Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians. It is more money for every Canadian, distributed in a fair fashion. The member should support it. Fair is fair.