Mr. Speaker, the Liberals constantly talk about the whole issue of cutting slowly.
I wonder if the member has had a mortgage on his home. I will assume that he has, along with probably 90 per cent of Canadians. Let us say it is a $50,000 mortgage and he is paying $500 a month. He probably knows that when he first starts paying on the mortgage very little goes toward the principal. Most of his $500 payment is going toward the interest. I also wonder whether the hon. member has had the opportunity perhaps through an inheritance or hard work on his part to put $10,000 toward the mortgage and seeing that instead of the money going toward interest that suddenly he is paying more on principal.
In other words, going slowly on deficit reduction simply does not work. To get the deficit to a point where it is not continuing to add to the burden of the debt there must be prompt, aggressive action so that we will not be doing away with our ability to fund the social programs, so that we will be able to reverse the situation that is forecast and planned for by his government of increasing interest payments from $38 billion to just under $51 billion. That $13 billion is eating up the ability to fund social programs.
Surely there must be some Liberal in this House who has had the experience of making an abrupt payment down on the principal of a mortgage. Can the hon. member not see that that principal might not apply to Canadian finances, therein being able to correctly and properly protect social program funding.