Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the spirit in which my hon. colleague has couched his remarks. He is a fine gentleman but I surely take issue with some of his comments.
The member talked about the seduction of governments which led us to this debt. To me that is absolute nonsense. Every family, every organizational group whether it be a church or community organization and every business in this country knows that we have to live within our means. They have done that for the last 25 years while this and previous governments have sunk this country into an enormous debt hole.
We talk about seduction. I think it is clear in the minds of millions of Canadians that it was a simple buying of the Canadian vote in election after election. That was the difficulty they had in pulling away from that kind of overspending and government waste.
We look at whether or not this government could have reached a balanced budget far earlier but in fact it has not even set a date for that. All we have to do is look at the provinces the hon. member referred to. All have placed themselves on track for a balanced budget. Provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have reached the point where they are now in a position to debate what they are to do with the surplus. They are deciding whether to reduce taxes or to plug some leaks in some of their programs through further expenditure of money and so on.
We are now approaching a debt of $600 billion. At the present interest rate, it appears that our interest payment on that debt is going to be somewhere near $50 billion a year.
I would like my hon. friend to address that issue. Can we deal with a $50 billion interest payment per year and still protect our social programs including our transfer payments to other provinces?