Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by making a comment and then asking my colleague to answer a question.
First, I very much enjoyed the beginning of his speech where he spoke about the me and we mentality. Then for whatever reason, I do not know why, he derailed himself and took a different type of train. I counted in excess of 52 different negative connotations throughout his speech. He spoke at the beginning about public cynicism and public confidence, yet his speech dealt only with the negative but not really the positive things this government and this country have to offer its people.
My colleague surely knows it is not government that creates jobs; it is the private sector. Surely my colleague and the public would know that all the government can and should do is create a proper environment so the private sector can create jobs. Historically, it has always been the private sector that has created jobs.
I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues that interest rates since we took office have been stable; we have stability in interest rates. Our trade has hit an all-time high. Our economic growth is leading the G-7 countries. My colleague could testify to the fact that our growth is greater than any other country in the western hemisphere.
The government has taken a number of steps in order to streamline and reorganize the way we deliver services. In fact some of those bills deal specifically with reorganizing, with giving different levels of government different responsibilities so we can better do the job we are supposed to be doing.
I also wanted to bring to my colleague's attention that there is a myth that government should not be looking at taxes for generating revenue. The only way for government to get revenue is through taxes. How else can we support programs unless we are generating tax revenues? Economic growth means businesses are doing well, which means government is generating more taxes.
Telling the public we are no longer going to collect taxes gives the wrong signal; it is the wrong thing to say. We should be saying that we need economic growth so government revenue could increase through taxes. If businesses do well we will bring in more taxes.
I do not understand why my colleague would say we can no longer collect tax from the private domain. That is the only way governments here and anywhere in the world can do business unless they were to go into business themselves. We were in business in the past. This government is trying to get out of doing business itself by streamlining, by privatizing part of the crown corporations we have so they can do the kind of work done by them in the past through the government. They will be able to do it on their own.
On the issue of spending, this government has done a tremendous amount of work in the area of spending. I do not know what my colleague expects. In one year the government came down with a budget that slashed over 45,000 jobs from the public service itself, from the public domain.
If we were to look at the balance sheet, this government is now generating more revenues than we are spending. In a way we are already in a surplus position. The problem here is there are no more cuts to be done but we have to increase revenues.
I will submit to my colleague that we should turn the me and we mentality into a mentality of we collectively.
Finally, I wanted to ask him what specifically he would suggest the government do that it has not done, and give it to us in point form without any negatives.