Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for paying close attention to my speech and asking interesting questions.
The population of New Zealand is a fraction of that of Canada. The only message we can get from that is we are going to be given a lot more rope to hang ourselves than New Zealand was given by the international buyers of its debt load.
Up to 60 per cent of our debt today is being purchased by foreigners. The day they pull the plug on us it will not matter what sort of resource base we have. We will be scrambling to find money.
Sweden has had difficulties with its international financing. It is really not related to population other than you get, as I said, more rope to hang yourself.
The New Zealand model is a very good model for what will happen here. It was pretty tough right after the debt crisis. However the average person on the streets in New Zealand was extremely happy to see the government finally taking the initiatives they had wanted them to take all along.
It is no good pretending there are not people abusing our social services system. There are lots of them and we had better be prepared to stand up, admit it and get on top of the problem. New Zealand was forced to because the money tree was taken away. That may well happen here. But I hope we come to the realization that we have to do something before the plug gets pulled on us too.