Mr. Speaker, it is no secret, of course, that there are some differences of opinion surrounding this issue, but I would like to point out a few things to my hon. friend.
First of all, the only reason the province of Nova Scotia has any rights to its own resources offshore is because of a Conservative government. He knows that. The Liberals were going to give his province nothing.
In fact, it was Conservatives who started fighting for offshore rights for Nova Scotia while in opposition and then followed through when they were in government by actually giving those rights to Nova Scotia in 1986. It was Conservatives who fought to push the former Liberal prime minister, who was not going to keep his promise to enter into the accords, into doing so. He did that because of pressure from Conservatives. Otherwise, he was not going to do that.
We also had a situation where there was a fiscal imbalance, where there were not enough transfers to the provinces for them to provide services to their citizens. Again the Liberals denied that there were any problems and said there was no fiscal imbalance. The current leader of the Liberal Party says there is no such thing as a fiscal imbalance, but again it was Conservatives who transferred huge amounts of money to the provinces, including the province that the member comes from.
As I just mentioned, there is $39 billion in new money from this Conservative government to the provinces and territories of this country to fix the fiscal imbalance. Again, nothing like that would have come from the Liberals.
The province of Nova Scotia specifically is $97 million better off today because of Conservative initiatives. If there are differences of opinion, as the member alludes to, then they will be worked out in good faith by this government because we want fairness in this country. We want fairness for every province, including the province of Nova Scotia.