Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question and assure the House that I am honoured from time to time to be mistaken for the hon. member. In fact I have had the pleasure of using his name on a number of occasions of which I will not bring the details to the House.
The response to the question is no in terms of the guaranteed annual income.
The hon. member asks, how does a government which has a limited fiscal capacity achieve its overall objective of enhancing the opportunities of every Canadian. I want to say to the hon. member that although this has been passed by party resolution, as he knows, it is still under active consideration. However I think I would be misleading him if I told him that tomorrow announcements were going to be made with regard to the guaranteed annual income; hence my response of no.
The government is proceeding in many ways to achieve that particular objective. First and most important, the Government of Canada under the auspices of the Prime Minister has recognized that the major economic and social problems facing the country today is the creation of economic growth, not just in small pockets of the major centres but indeed all regions in all quarters of all provinces. So we would be working toward trying to create economic activity in all regions of the country.
A list of things are contained in the throne speech. Perhaps at another opportunity the hon. member would raise this kind of question so that I could give him more details, such as the pre-natal program, the aboriginal head start program, the RRAP program which has provided much needed housing in all regions of the country. There will be a variety of other programs ministers will be announcing in the course of this debate as well as in the debate when the Minister of Finance announces his budget.