Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the hon. member was last February or where he has been since, but that was clearly announced in the federal budget last February. I am glad that after nine months he is finally able to catch up with the figures.
There was a clear declaration in the budget that we were going to hold transfer payments under these programs at the 1993-94 level. As a result we have started to work with the provinces to find ways of more efficiently dealing with the problems of social assistance. We have already worked with provinces to find collaborative ways of enabling people on social assistance to get back to work, to begin to change the rules.
That is one of the things which is part and parcel of the green book. We are prepared to immediately work with the provinces to change the rules under the Canada assistance plan to enable almost 50 per cent of those who are on social assistance and want to get back into the workforce to do so without being prohibitively discriminated against by losing income. The best way to handle the social assistance problem is to get people a job.