Mr. Speaker, I would be delighted to reply to my hon. colleague.
He asks me how I will come up with the $16 billion the GST generates. It was the Liberal Party that went door to door in October 1993 and said it will scrap it, abolish it, throw it away.
The question should be asked of the Prime Minister and particularly the Deputy Prime Minister how they will come up with the $16 billion. It is not my question to answer.
The hon. member makes the point of the five-cent reduction in premiums. That is five cents, one-twentieth of 1 per cent; five cents on every $100 of earned income. We were told this huge reduction, five cents on $100, will produce 25,000 jobs. That must be the new math, the Liberal math perhaps.
Following that reasoning, why do we not bring down the premium a full percentage point and create half a million jobs? We could reduce it 2 per cent, 3 per cent. We would have to import people to fill all the jobs in this country if we followed the reasoning of the members opposite.
The member opposite says we can create jobs, and maybe we can. Private industry can create jobs, private enterprise can. I do not believe for one minute that governments can create jobs. Every government over the last 25 years has said it would create jobs and that it is capable of creating jobs. If this is true we should all be working at two or three jobs.
I think the problem is being attacked from the wrong end. If we did not have to pay $48 billion in interest to the international bankers every 12 months, $4 billion a month in interest, we would be able to fund social programs, unemployment insurance and medicare to the fullest extent. If the government had followed the Reform plan it would be sitting over there debating what it would do with the surplus next year and not about how it is saddled with all this.