Mr. Speaker, to begin with I would like to state that as a rookie parliamentarian I am fast learning what those with experience do. They like to twist things. Whatever it is you say they like to twist and flip it, just as the member opposite did when he stood up and said that I think we should have a guaranteed annual income. I did not say that. What I said was that we could consider it. I said let us solve the big problem. We could consider it.
Also members opposite, especially the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Minister of Finance, said that in the social policy debate when the hon. member for Calgary North talked about what the federal government had to do to meet their deficit targets, the cuts it would have to make. The cuts this government has to make to meet its targets are not the $9 billion being talked about in the newspapers today. Over the next two and a half to three years it will be cuts of $15 billion that will have to be made. That is the point our member on the committee made at a press conference.
This government proceeds not only in Question Period but at any opportunity it gets to say that the Reform Party is recommending cuts of $15 billion in social programs. That is not true. The government itself is recommending cuts of about $9 billion in social programs. It is not saying it. Secret memos are circulating from minister to minister. It does not come clean with the general public. It likes to twist things.
Yesterday the member for Calgary West asked why go over a wide chasm in two leaps. The finance minister got up right away; why not do it in one, was the implication. That was my inference. What was the finance minister's inference? His is: "Let's twist it and use it against them. The public is gullible; the public will really listen to me. I have a good routine. I can really deliver this. Unlike the Reform Party, we would not do it in two steps". He missed the point, as they continually do. Similarly, the government whip has just missed the point on taxing and the point I made about the MP pension plans.
During my speech I may have said $7 to $1. If I said that it is inaccurate and I am wrong. That is not accurate so to that degree I will agree with it. The amount of money MPs put into the pension plan and the amount the government puts in on our behalf is not matching dollar for dollar. It is not matching two for one. It is not matching three for one.
There are two parts to it. There is a 4 per cent and a 7 per cent. The 7 per cent part, not the pension plan itself but the 7 per cent, the registered annual allowance or whatever it is, I do not even know the initials it is so complicated, the ratio of what the government puts in, what the taxpayers put in, versus what MPs put in is seven to one. If he cares to refute that then he can rise any time he wishes.
This is the kind of twisting government people do once they get power. I do not understand. In business I get nowhere by misrepresenting the facts. I get egg on my face and I get the door closed in my face the next time I come around. Perhaps that is why people in Canada always turf out a government: they find when members are over on this side they say one thing but when they are on the other side they do another.
This is one thing the Reform Party will not do. What we say here today on this side, what we put in our blue book and our policy book, and what we work hard to do to find out what constituents want and the voters want, we will do when we get over on that side. Mr. Speaker, I assure you we will be over on that side and we will do what we said we would do from this side.