Mr. Speaker, first of all, if the hon. member looks at her figures, she will see that, according to Statistics Canada, Canadians did get poorer-she is right about that-but it happened before we came to office. Since we came to office, the situation has stabilized, which means we made significant progress. We would like to increase Canadians' income, but before we could do so, we had to stabilize it.
Second, yes, there will be a $5 billion surplus at the end of the year. This does not mean that the surplus will keep growing forever. But we do need a surplus to protect ourselves against a recession.
As I said earlier, according to the auditor general, this money is included in our figures. When we lower premiums as we did last year and as we intend to do this year and hope to do in the years to come, it certainly costs us money.
Having said that, I want to ask the hon. member, because I myself cannot ask my provincial counterpart, Mr. Landry: Will she ask Mr. Landry, will she thank Mr. Landry, who said yesterday-