Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Yorkton-Melville for his input. Many of us on this side listen to what they have to say. I know whenever there were good ideas that previous governments sort of gobbled them up and used them as theirs.
I will make a couple of comments and then I will ask a question. One comment I hear a lot in the House from Reformers is about the red ink book. I am the member for Bruce-Grey and I want to tell them that the word redd means cleaning up a mess and getting the house in order. That is exactly what the government is doing.
In the sixties we had problems with a fuel crisis. There were mechanics who fixed old fashioned cars with carburettors. However, modern cars from perhaps 1993 onward are distinctly different; they do not have carburettors. When drivers put their foot to the floor in cars with carburettors, a certain volume of air came in through the carburettor, mixed with the fuel, and the fuel was dumped out the exhaust.
Modern cars have from one to four computers. When drivers switch on modern cars the computers react to the temperature outside. If it is zero degrees they know exactly what kind of fuel is needed. There is no RPM from the RPM gauge. There is no air flow through the manifold pressure sensing devices. The computer plugs in the value. The car starts and goes into what is called an open loop. In that open loop the computer triggers. The oxygen sensing device senses the fuel coming out of the carburettor. It knows that maybe it is too rich and sends a message back to the computer. The RPM works and so on and so forth.
I am using this analogy because the government is like the modern devices on cars. We have people with the talent and ability, such as the finance minister, the Prime Minister, members of the cabinet and members of the government including the rump over there, to adjust to new conditions.
In the case of a brand new car, if drivers want to pass they put their foot to the floor. The air conditioning system and everything that is not necessary are shut down. That is the first thing that happens.
The government found itself in the position where there was debt that had been incurred over two decades at which time no government had the political will to do what we are doing. We are chopping $29 billion over the next three years. We have contingency funds. We have gold reserves. We have dollars to back up situations when the interest rates rise to make sure that we can look after that particular eventuality.
In addition, we are not like members opposite who open the hood of a new car and shut it because they do not know how to fix it. They come back with old-fashioned ideas, looking for the carburettor that is not there or looking for some other device that is not there. That is their problem. If they have great ideas to suggest to the House, I assure them we will accept them.
What would the Reform Party do to repatriate our foreign debt?