Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's comments, particularly her closing comments by Sir Wilfrid Laurier. If I may take a moment I would like to offer some comments by Mackenzie King, who I understand was a Liberal, that may be appropriate for this time in our political history. I may not get this right, but you will understand the context of it. He said: "When control of our currency and our credit is taken away and usury takes over, then all efforts and hopes of democracy are both useless and futile".
We have a situation in this country where we have lost control of our financial house. We have a debt of over $500 billion. We have interest payments of $50 billion which are continuing to rise.
The point I want to make is that despite all the nice words contained in the throne speech about hope and optimism, despite all the words spoken by hon. members from the government, the fact is that every single discussion, every single decision made in the House is influenced by the severely impaired financial state of the country.
Reformers have been saying that we must begin to restore hope and optimism for people of all ages from students who are trying to get an education and find it a tremendous financial burden, people who are out of work and are living on welfare or no money at all, people who are trying to build careers and raise families. Every decision the government makes is impeded by our financial state. No matter what words we use to offer hope, the fact is that we have to get our financial house in order. It is so important. We cannot even talk about making democratic decisions because we are so influenced by the financial crisis.
What positive steps do we see? How are we going to reach a balanced budget? When are we going to reach a balanced budget? How do we explain to the Canadian people that the $50 billion we are paying in interest is something we have to live with? This $50 billion is taking away from our social programs, our health care, our education payments. It has a hold on us to such an extent that we almost cannot function as a government until we get this financial mess straightened out.
What kind of answer does the government have? There is none in the throne speech. There are a lot of fluffy words but there are no concrete answers.