Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question. I will preface my comments by indicating that I served on the finance committee most of last year and worked with the member as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. To my shock, I came to have some high regard for her personally and enjoyed her company. We travelled Canada and we spent some time working together. I came to know that she is a very engaging person and I have enjoyed that.
However, I disagree with her on some very fundamental points. I want to talk about the Atlantic accord. I have asked the member this question before. She has indicated that in her view the Atlantic accord was a “gerrymandered”, and she used that word, and ad hoc agreement. I disagree with her and I think I have made that clear.
I want to talk to her specifically about what the Atlantic accord is. There is a lot of confusion but it is very simple. At its essence, the Atlantic accord assured Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador that they would be the full beneficiaries of offshore, over and above whatever equalization program was in place at the time. Thus, if equalization changed, as it did under the previous administration, Nova Scotia would get the benefit of the new equalization plus the Atlantic accord.
The Minister of Finance mocks Atlantic Canada and insults Atlantic Canada when he stands in this chamber and says we have the choice of the new equalization or the old deal and the Atlantic accord. The Atlantic accord specifically said that whatever the new equalization is, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador would get the benefit of that, plus the offshore. It was not one or the other. It was both.
In Nova Scotia, as in Newfoundland and Labrador, everyone knows that this budget torched the Atlantic accord. Academics, economists, Conservative premiers and an all party resolution of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia, including the minister married to the Conservative member for South Shore—St. Margaret's, all said that we have to honour the accord, that it has been broken. Mr. John Crosbie today was quoted in a secret memo from before now as saying that this breaks the Atlantic accord and that the choice they are forced to make “does not fulfill the 2005 agreement”.
There is no question that the Atlantic accord has been shunned and has been pushed aside. I want to ask my colleague, very seriously and simply, does she believe the Atlantic accord was honoured in this budget or does she agree with the member for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, who made the principled decision yesterday that it did not and he cannot live with that?