Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Yesterday, when he spoke to students at a high school in Toronto, the Prime Minister, echoing his Minister of Finance, indicated that his government's first budget would contain no major spending cuts to bring down the deficit. On the weekend in Calgary, the Minister of Finance made it clear that it would be at least a year before we would see any major spending cuts.
My question is this: Considering what was said yesterday in Toronto by the Prime Minister, are we to conclude that the government has reversed its policy by postponing real spending cuts and that, underestimating the gravity of the structural causes of the deficit, it has decided to rely on the hypothetical boost afforded by an otherwise lacklustre economic recovery?