Mr. Speaker, appreciate the awe that the member and all Canadians feel for this place. However, what governments have done and the irresponsibility they have shown in handling taxpayers' money causes me to feel disdain for this place.
Governments have been totally irresponsible. Finance ministers since the early 1970s have said that they realized that the deficit must be dealt with. John Turner in 1975 said: "I come now to specific measures. None is more important than the control of public expenditures".
When the Prime Minister was finance minister in 1978 he said: "Significant reductions in deficits can be expected". They did not happen. Many previous finance ministers promised to deal with the problem of overspending. It did not happened. Canadians cannot feel awe for this place with these kinds of actions on the part of governments when dealing with taxpayers' money.
The member also spoke about the trillions of dollars in assets that Canada has. That kind of thinking is terribly upsetting to me. In Mexico assets meant very little when it did not deal with its overspending problem. The United States took over its oil reserves for the next number of years because Mexico needed the money. The United States along with other countries through the International Monetary Fund provided the money.
This finance minister, with the ever growing interest payments on the debt increasing to $50 billion, has not dealt with the problem.