Mr. Speaker, with all kindness intended before I ask a question I must express to the House the tremendous amount of difficulty I have sitting here day after day listening to the reference to Quebecers and Canadians. Until such time as that situation should change, I suggest it might be helpful certainly for me, but I say that I am a Canadian from British Columbia, and probably the majority of members in this House would refer to themselves in a like manner. The exception seems to be with some of my friends to my right and I am having some difficulty with that.
That having been said I am interested in the position of members of the Bloc Quebecois. On one side of the coin they, like ourselves, would not support tax increases. On the other side of the coin when we talk about targeting there seems to be some misunderstanding by Bloc members where they believe that the Reform Party is calling for cuts evenly distributed across the board.
We talk about targeting to make sure that people who require the support of social programs will be protected and that the funding for those social programs for those who are in the most need will be there. That is why we are talking about targeting the support of social programs thereby creating decreases in the amount going out.
I wonder if the member could help us understand. I believe the member is talking about eliminating waste in government programs. We could shut down all of the federal apparatus, fire every single solitary person in the federal civil service, close down this institution and indeed stop paying rent on all of the buildings. Does the hon. member realize that even in doing that we would still have a deficit and still be adding to the problem of an increasing amount of debt?
If over 50 per cent of the current expenditures by the federal government are in the form of transfers to individuals either through the provinces or in direct payments in social assistance and his party is unwilling to touch that, but cannot possibly balance the budget without touching it, how would his party propose to balance the budget? I do not understand that kind of thinking.
Yes there is waste and yes waste must be eliminated. I agree with the comments of some of the Liberal Party members who have said that they too want to cut down on that waste. However, that is not where it is going to come from.
If the member cannot possibly balance the budget without cutting into or directing the payments to individuals under social programs, how would he propose we balance the budget?