I share your frustration, Madame Boucher. I think we're frustrated about the same things from different vantage points.
To get to your question, am I apolitical, I must be apolitical because I wouldn't have voted for the budget and everybody did. It got passed. Seriously, on the issue about politics, Madame Boucher, I would be saying the same thing to a Liberal government, and I have said the same thing to a Liberal government that was focused on tax cuts.
From 1997-98 to as far as you can see—2012-13, which is your budget's projection—we've had $340 billion in tax cuts. It's not just the Conservatives that have done it, but the Conservatives accelerated it. I am against that unbalanced use of a surplus.
I'm not against tax cuts when our social deficits are met. Women have been asked to wait in good times and bad. Women bore the biggest brunt of the Liberal program cuts in 1995. The Liberal government introduced cuts in 1995 to the programs that women rely on. I've been railing against those cuts to programs and now I'm railing against tax cuts. I think women have been waiting for too long to have the needs met, not of women but of families and communities across this country.
So in the sense that I am not for this budget, I can see how you would perceive that as being not political. Frankly, what we are talking about in gender-budget analysis is any government, and I've said this in my opening remarks. Any budget needs to take a look at the gendered impact of their measures. If we had had it in place in 1995, they couldn't have balanced the books on the backs of women. They would have seen how those cuts disproportionately affected women.
We need gender-budget analysis to be apolitical, to say neither the costs nor the benefits should flow disproportionately to one group or another. So in that sense I am apolitical, and I am as committed as Kathleen. I've been doing this for 25 years.
Lastly, I don't know what miracle you worked to get a mention of a commitment to gender equality in this budget. You read this passage. It's 52 words in a 416-page document. I don't know what process you go through to get that inserted. I salute you and your colleagues who did it, and I really hope that opens up the opportunity to make good on it. So thank you for doing that.