Madam Speaker, I was very appreciative of the comments the member made referring to the Canada Health Act and other social programs like that. He said, and I agree with him, if anybody thinks we can cut the deficit without cutting in this area they are wrong. I am being quite serious, not sarcastic. I hope he and other people who are responsible in the Liberal caucus get that message through to certain backbenchers like the member for Halifax or Beeches-Woodbine.
I wonder if the member would agree that in the case of the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act and the doing away with the PUITTA grant, that very specifically was a tax increase.
The second question is with respect to the downsizing of the civil service. The member will recall that in committee I was trying to draw the minister out about the reverse of the hiring quotas or numerical targets. Does the member understand there will be absolutely no attempt on the part of the Liberal government to achieve its numerical targets under employment equity when it is laying people off by using that process selectively to simply do a reverse hiring procedure on the way it is planning on doing the hiring procedure to gain its balances?