Minister, they have in the United States, by department, how much is allocated, how much is spent on the health department, education, veterans, agriculture, and I could go on. Our system is highly inadequate compared with theirs in terms of information provided to Canadians. And please don't talk about their deficit being bigger. I know it is. The Prime Minister went off on that tangent yesterday. The issue is transparency.
But I'd like to use the rest of my dwindling time to talk about deficits, which is another issue that our leader has raised.
Initially in your report you would not commit to any year in which the deficit would be eliminated. Then, on television on one of the networks, you did commit; and then on the other one, at approximately the same time, you didn't; and yesterday you did commit to 2013-14.
My point is that in the budget the surplus for 2013-14 was $0.7 billion. That was your projection, and as you know, in the world of finance that's like a rounding error. That's a tiny little surplus. So here you have a surplus in the budget of $0.7 billion, and you suddenly go from a deficit of $34 billion to a deficit of $50 billion. Think of all the extra interest you pay on that debt, and then that deficit is going to continue. There'll be some upward effects on deficits in ensuring years as a consequence of that, so your little surplus of $0.7 billion will be more than wiped out by the interest payments alone on the additional debt that you are incurring.
I understand why you wouldn't give a date in the report, because you can't do it unless you have additional measures. But I don't understand how you think you can add $50 billion per year and then more in future years on to the debt and still say you're going to be in balance, when you're starting out with a tiny little surplus. And when TD Bank says the deficit in the same year will be $19 billion--TD Bank has a certain amount of credibility--I think you owe it to Canadians to explain how, given the change in circumstances, given there's a $50 billion deficit, you still propose to be in balance in 2013-14.