Mr. Speaker, with respect to the reference to my age, mature and wise would be better than old and decrepit. In response to what the member has just said, surely I am not so old that I lived before these programs were in place. I guess they did come into place about the time I was in my youth. Certainly they were not nearly as invasive and pervasive as they are now. That is the difference.
We used to have a very modest program for unemployment insurance and everybody was employed. Now we have a pervasive program of unemployment insurance and we have a 12 per cent or 10 per cent rate of unemployment.
That is what I was talking about. There has been such an increase in government programs and such an increase in taxation as a result that the economic balance has been seriously tilted.