Perhaps members opposite could put up their hands a little faster the next time so they can ask a question. I have been here for the last hour and a half. I know some days I am not as clear in thought as I want to be, but these guys have me completely confused.
I would like to ask a couple of questions about the numbers we have been given in the budget and in the borrowing authority bill.
I would like to know whether the minister can tell me if the Minister of Finance has met the deficit targets he has put forward in each of his budgets. If the answer is in the affirmative I would like to know if he has exceeded them.
I also want to know, because members opposite seem so concerned about Canadians who are jobless, whether we have created any jobs and how many jobs have been created because of the fiscal framework of the Minister of Finance.
I think this is important for people who are watching the debate. I think I am asking the types of questions Canadians want answered.
The next thing I want to know is whether the government in the fiscal framework of the budgets it has put forward and the various borrowing authorities that have come out, has it maintained the principle of access to things like health care across the country by the priority and by the transfers? Second, in the whole area of social policy and transfers to the provinces whether it has stabilized the transfers to the provinces through things like the CHST, equalization and other programs?
I get confused when I sit here after I read all of what the government has done. I am a part of that government and I was rather proud of the platform we ran on. As a matter of fact I am quite proud of the way the Minister of Finance has done his job in the last two and a half years. He has not just met those commitments but exceeded them.
Is it true that the government, through the Minister of Finance and under the direct auspices of the Prime Minister, has done what the Reform Party obviously finds so distasteful? Has it put confidence back into the Canadian economy, made sure that Canadian investors keep up with where we are going? Has it driven down interest rates so that there is more investment in this country? Has it created an atmosphere for the creation of not 10,000, not 50,000, not 100,000 but 600,000 jobs and at the same time has its deficit projections under control?
At the same time the government has stabilized the transfers to the provinces. It has made sure that programs that are as much a part of the fabric of the country as anything else that defines us have not been savaged, as the members opposite would have done. The government has managed to do it all with the support of over 58 per cent of the Canadian public while the policies of the members opposite are in such disrepute with the Canadian public that they are mired at 12 per cent in the polls. Their members run off in all directions crying at the drop of a hat. They know that they have frittered away the opportunity that was given to them in the last election by the Canadian electorate.