Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Kitchener for his very well reasoned, prepared speech. It was well delivered.
I want to say something about this farm analogy which occurred to me the instant he said it. He indicated that he thought Reformers, after the pail was full of milk, would then kick over the pail-not so. We are more committed than anybody around here to very carefully carrying that pail because it is not our milk. It belongs to the taxpayers.
Also, the thought occurred to me that before they kneel down on the stool beside the cow, they are forgetting to check whether the pail has a bottom. Theirs does not. When putting $120 billion a year into the government coffers as Canadian taxpayers are and there is $160 billion coming out of the bottom, we know the hole at the bottom is larger than the input at the top. That is an item of great concern.
I want to ask the member to respond to a question having to do with the urgency of reducing the deficit. Does he acknowledge-I know he cannot speak for the other members of his party-that the leadership of that party is an item of great concern to thinking Canadians because of the rapidly growing debt? Even if they are on target they are going to be adding roughly $80 billion to $100 billion to the debt before this Parliament is finished. Even very modest interest rates of 5 per cent indicate an additional cost of $5 billion per year. Just having the debt grow at this rate adds basically one-eighth to our present deficit without any additional programs being financed.
What I would like to hear just one Liberal member say is it is time they attack this, attack it vigorously and quickly and very effectively to get government spending down.