Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to the questions from the hon. member.
I will deal first with the fact that the Liberals spent eight years in opposition and they could not do anything about the fact that the debt and deficit were increasing. I suggest to the member that they did nothing but encourage the deficit and debt to increase. They did not understand the magnitude of the problem then; they do not understand the magnitude of the problem now. Nothing has changed.
The Conservative government was turfed out for not listening. I would suggest that three years down the road this government will be turfed out because it is still not listening to the Canadian people.
Cuts of $7 for every $1 in increased revenue. There is no justification for any revenue increase. There is more than enough to balance the books in cuts. When there has been overspending for 20 years we cannot keep saying that we need more dollars, but a strong case can be made for saying: "Yes, we have been going into your pockets deeper and deeper; we are going to start pulling back now". Now is the time. If the Liberals have missed that message, they will go the same way the Conservatives did in just a few years.
My leader has never said that social programs should not be touched. The books cannot be balanced without touching the social programs. That is the reality of the amount of money we spend in that area. The word is that they have been responsible for the problem. They have not been responsible for the problem. However, there have to be cuts in there. The books absolutely cannot be balanced without doing it.