Madam Speaker, to the secretary of state, I notice in the document provided by the government yesterday called the "Budget in Brief" there is a quote on page 14: "This government is absolutely committed to providing a fair and sustainable system of protection for Canada's seniors".
I wonder if he can help us understand something here. The government has just made, I grant, real cuts of $10 billion. The payment on interest in the time that this government has been in place has increased $10 billion which means that we are treading water. Interest charges are increasing at a rate of 17.3 per cent. The governments have let our Canada pension plan get into a position of being underfunded $487.5 billion on top of the $545 billion that we are in debt at the national level; in other words, over a trillion dollars.
Considering all this, I wonder if he would not agree with me that the words in "Budget in Brief" saying, to quote the finance minister, that come hell or high water we are going to look after our seniors are not just words.
If we are going in the hole that quickly with additional interest charges which is interest being paid on money that we have already borrowed, we are going backward so rapidly that in spite of this government's words we are not going to have the capacity to be able to look after our seniors.