Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his intervention. He puts his finger on the core problem that has to be resolved in the House, I would hope in the course of the budget debate.
After the spending cuts that have been proposed by the minister the sad problem is that we still end up running a $25 billion deficit at the end of 1997. The federal debt is over $600 billion and the interest payments on that debt are over $50 billion.
If members would work through the consequences of those higher interest costs on the rest of the social spending, particularly the social programs, they would find that does more damage to the social services network than virtually anything that has ever been proposed by anybody in terms of spending reductions.
The taxpayers' budget we presented endeavoured to get the deficit down more quickly so that the debt stops growing and this bleeding off of social program spending through interest payments ceases.
I honestly submit to the House that if people would compare those two, the pain of the cuts to get the deficit down more quickly versus the pain that will come if nothing is done and those programs are all eroded by higher interest costs, they would find it would be more advisable, more saleable to the electorate and more acceptable to Canadians to hit the Reform target of deficit elimination in three years rather than the minister's target of cut the deficit in half by 1997.