Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Beaver River for her comments. I must have missed something which I suppose is possible but unlikely. However I have just a couple of points in case the hon. member has missed something.
The government has not raised taxes and the government has not raised the debt. Indeed the government is lowering both. Perhaps if the member paid attention to the comments of the Minister of Finance she would realize that.
I listened, I listened hard, and the member for Brant said to me as she went across to her seat: "Have they said where they are going to cut?" I did not hear them say where they were going to cut. They said they were going to cut the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, a favour whipping post, I might add. May I say that on occasion the national action committee and I have not always seen eye to eye on process although our goals are very similar. It may come as a raving shock to members on the other side that according to most statistics and most polls over 90 per cent of Canadian women, whether they call themselves feminists or not, happen to hold the same goals as the national action committee.
Probably what the hon. member does not know is that some groups belonging to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women such as women's institutes, the United Church Women of Canada and the YWCA of Canada, mainstream women's groups, hold very strong views and are part and parcel of the group. I do not want to cut the funding to them.
Perhaps the hon. member, not having a whole lot of experience in the area of feminism and gender equality, would not know that women making 60 cents for every dollar that men make have to do fairly basic things like pay the rent, feed their children and a few other important things. They do not have a lot of money to give away. Governments are important in this regard. We are not going to cut off our noses to spite our faces which appears to be the kind of thing the hon. member is advocating.