Mr. Speaker, the hon. member spent quite a bit of time patting himself on the back for what a wonderful job he has done representing his constituents and for the tremendous job the government has done, he claims, on reducing the deficit and getting the whole country into such splendid order.
The fact is that if the Reform Party had not been sitting on this side of the House opposite them, we would still be mired in the days of Liberal tax and spend. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Everybody across the country knows that if it were not for Reform having brought the issues of the debt and deficit to the notice of the public during the 1993 campaign, the Liberal government would not have done a darn thing about it.
I was at a meeting in the Vancouver area and the member from Halifax was present. I heard her say to the audience: "As a tax and spend Liberal, I crashed and burned with the way the Minister of Finance has handled the finances of the country". She crashed and burned. What a tremendously visual thing that is. Her entire being as a Liberal was destroyed by what was being done by the finance minister. He would not have done it had it not been for the public pressure built by the Reform Party of Canada, the Alberta government, following up with the Harris government in Ontario.
The Liberals have addressed the deficit to a degree and let us be sure, they certainly fiddled the figures a bit by increasing the deficit in their first year. Even if we agree they have done something, what they have subjected the country to is the torture of a thousand small cuts. It has been cut here, cut there, cut here. Nobody has had the time to heal and get on with their lives. The public resolve has been broken down to fix the problems. The Liberals should have done it rapidly and quickly the way it was done in New Zealand; amputate entire departments so that we could get the budget balanced quickly and get on with our lives. This was not done.
The Liberals take credit for some of this but in fact while they have fiddled and made this torture of a thousand small cuts, our debt has built up almost to the $600 billion level, and that has eaten away at our social programs. By the year 2007 they will have cut $7 billion from health care transfers because they will not get on top of the problem fast enough.
The Liberal claim that all sorts of jobs have been created is baloney to the 1.8 million people across the country who are out of work, the 18 per cent to 24 per cent of young people who are out of work. I am lucky because in my riding it is only around 4 per cent. I am in an area where the youth are well employed.
Since the hon. member is so proud of his representation for his constituents, could he please give me some examples of how he has represented his constituents in his votes? There are plenty of examples here of how he has suppressed his colleagues when he was the whip and forced them to toe the party line. I am sure his constituents would love to hear how he perhaps canvassed their views and represented them in this place as opposed to representing the party line.