Mr. Speaker, prior to the budget being brought in I consulted with employee representatives, the various union leaders, with respect to the fact that in order to get the deficit down we were going to have to make some of the cuts on the wage bill. We looked at various options. I told them that we were looking for up to a billion dollars. I got their input on this matter.
First and foremost union representatives said that they wanted to preserve jobs. That is what we took. We found that the best way to make those cuts was to extend the wage freeze and to try to preserve jobs.
We looked at a lot of other options: everything from wage rollbacks to the kinds of measures that the hon. member's leader in Ontario had taken, but those Rae days, those kinds of measures were very unpopular with the union. We did what we believed was best to preserve the jobs for our employees.