Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to congratulate you on your appointment and I would like to congratulate the member on his election.
It is unfortunate that there are not more members in the House today. It may be due to the fact that we keep hearing all the negativism. Canadians are fed up with negativism. Clearly we point out to the member that his party not that long ago talked about the deficit as the number one issue in this country.
Maybe the member of the opposition went to the school of Orwellian politics, doublespeak. On the one hand, they want the deficit eliminated. Now the deficit is being eliminated and they say “Well gee, we don't like the way this is being done”.
My comment is that in order to stimulate the economy, we had to get that deficit down, slay that $42 billion dragon. Clearly there are more Canadians going back to work. We saw 900,000 Canadians put back to work because of this government and the actions of this government. Want ads are fuller today than they have ever been.
Clearly reducing taxes, yes, I think all Canadians would like to see taxes reduced. The question is the timing of those reductions basically because, if we are taking in more money in order to be able to deal with the deficit and certainly the debt—we have a $600 billion debt which I hope they would deal with—I would say that the hon. member talks about chequebook politics. Could he explain to me what are the chequebook politics? Helping Canadians I believe is what the government is doing in the throne speech. Maybe he should read that.
Could the member comment on what he defines as chequebook politics?