I certainly appreciate the question. It is a very leading question. It gives me an opportunity to espouse our position very clearly.
Some ingredients have changed since we set forward our zero in three plan in early 1993 in terms of revenue possibilities. The actual deficit is much greater than the one we projected. I believe we were looking at around $35 billion. We are now into a projection of $44 billion to $46 billion. There certainly are other areas of government that we must look at in terms of bringing about those kinds of expenditure reductions.
Basically the Reform Party looked at three areas. In the broad area of government efficiency we recommended that some areas have 15 per cent cuts. That is in the document we presented today.
The second area we looked at was grants that are now made available to businesses and special interest groups. In that area we felt we could reduce the expenditures of government by about $4.3 billion.
The third area we looked at were transfers to individuals. We have said clearly that health care was not one of them. We were to maintain the expenditure pattern as set out in the 1992-93 budget. It is to be kept at that level until we could maybe add to it, but there would not be a reduction in health care spending or in advanced education. We also had a hold on retraining and criminal justice programs.
Other areas we were looking at were unemployment insurance and old age assistance. For example, we wanted to look at an income threshold of $54,000. In examining that we could reduce the direct expenditure in that area by about $3.5 billion, by putting in that family threshold of $54,000. Those are some of the kinds of things we were looking at.
We have tested those with many Canadians and have had very positive responses. We intend to continue to do that. There may be others we will have to put on the table. Now that we have a major contingent elected to the House, it would be our plan to develop, refine and certainly be more specific in terms of further expenditure reduction patterns.