You see how important this is, Madam Speaker. The Liberals are at me for my tie. Rome is burning and they are at me for my tie.
My point is that while we talk about taking credit for business cycles and so on, Rome is burning to some extent. The average taxpayer is wondering what these federal politicians are really doing in Ottawa.
Yesterday I also heard comments in the House from one of our colleagues in the Liberal Party who was very concerned about my criticisms of ACOA, the regional development agency in Atlantic Canada. The comment was Reformers do not like Atlantic Canadians because we have the audacity to complain about regional development grants.
The relationship between complaining about grants and not liking a certain region is ridiculous. Yesterday I heard from one of the Bloc members: "You had better be careful what you say about the east; you are talking about FORD-Quebec". It is not about the people and where they live. It is about how much money we have in this country.
Today we hear about the federal government's central control over regional development, about the funds that are going its way. We also hear the PQ, the separatists, talking about how this is so much of a waste: "We are doing it in our province anyway and the federal government is wasting its".
We hear the Liberals saying they are going to keep it the same and big daddy is going to hand out all the regional development grants to everybody.
What people are hearing from the Reformers is the logical approach. Should we be handing out in excess of $1 billion a year in regional development grants when we are overspending by $40 billion a year and we have a $530 billion debt load? We have to get some priorities in place.
The people watching and listening must think this is all a nightmare. We are talking about giving moneys out to regions and the amounts given out are not small dollars. ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, is over $375 million a year, FORD-Quebec is in excess of $437 million a year and western economic diversification is $452 million a year.
We have to borrow this money to give out. We are saying let us be a little more realistic here, folks. We have to cut back, if not over a period of time eliminate this. I have some ideas on where to eliminate. I will show today some of the ridiculous grants that have been given out by this government-