Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the member for Lincoln for his great speech. Of course, his speech was typical of Liberal supporters who, of course, will fully approve, whatever the content of the Minister of Finance's budget.
A recent opinion poll suggested that barely four per cent of Canadians trusted their politicians. Unfortunately, the quality of our members of Parliament and ministers, the present Minister of Finance in particular, is no help in improving this meagre four per cent our constituents are giving us. With four per cent, we might just as well say we are in the basement. Since the margin of error is plus or minus three per cent, one might wonder whether it is one per cent or seven per cent. If it really is one per cent, it could mean only their friends.
Speaking of credibility, Mr. Mulroney, on taking office in 1984, said: "Let me run this country for 20 years, and you will not recognize the country". We put our trust in him for nine years and, in fact, after nine years, Canada-or Quebec-is almost unrecognizable.
When Mr. Mulroney took office, the Liberals had accumulated a $250 billion debt. Oddly enough, this morning, not one member opposite mentioned that fact. Yet, these Liberals are the ones who created this outrageous deficit of $250 billion.
Mr. Mulroney took over the government with a deficit of $250 billion and brought it to $500 billion. Two years and a few months after the Liberals came back in office, the amount is over $600 billion-from $500 to $600 billion. It seems that the bigger the deficit, the less scary it is.
The member for Lincoln should also understand that these Liberals are ruining our reputations as politicians. The Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Hamilton, promised to resign if, after twelve months, the GST had not been scrapped. What did she do? Yesterday, she did not hesitate to vote against a motion, a silly motion, I must say.
In this budget-and I would like the member for Lincoln to tell us why-the Minister of Finance did absolutely nothing to reform the tax system in order to eliminate the numerous tax shelters that allow people to pay less taxes, something he himself is an expert at. On the contrary, he targeted the unemployed, farmers, women and young people. This is the future the Liberal Party is preparing for us.