I thank the hon. member for the opportunity to remind the government when it talks about making smaller cuts that what it is talking about is increasing the interest payments in the year 1997 to $50 billion. When the government is spending $50 billion on interest payments it means there will be less money to spend on social programming.
The only alternative the government has is to take the long term approach by taking short term pain by making the cuts now, making sure that interest payments do not escalate to the level they will be escalating.