Madam Speaker, after hearing the reassuring words of the minister I would like to be able to say I will sleep better tonight, but I cannot.
The minister referred in his presentation to serving up illusions. The inference is that this is no longer happening to us with the present government. We have had 25 years of illusions, 25 years of rhetoric, 25 years of telling us we are going to get tough with the deficit, we are going to really move in on it this year, next year or the year after that.
What the minister forgets is that it was much easier for previous finance ministers to sell illusions than it is for the incumbent. Previous finance ministers could actually make illusory cuts and sell them, but the present minister, in order to sell an illusion, has to make real cuts. The problem is that it remains an illusion because the cuts are not deep enough.
All that is happening is that the government is making enough cuts in the projected spending for the next three years to keep even with the additional interest that it is going to have to pay on the money it already owes. The government is standing still.
It makes me think of a sailor who has been shipwrecked and is treading water madly. He sees a lifeboat about 100 yards away. Instead of trying to make it to that lifeboat he says: "That's too tough, that's too hard. I'm just going to keep right on treading water". He does and eventually he drowns. This government is treading water and Canada is drowning in debt.
I ask the minister, what contingency plan does this government have for the time when the interest payments on our deadweight debt become so great that there is no money left to maintain social programs or even basic government services? This is the direction in which we are heading.
We are heading in a direction where there will be no social safety net. There will be no pensions. There will be no welfare. There will be no UIC. There will be nothing if the whole rotten house of cards comes tumbling down. What contingency plan does this government have?