Madam Speaker, I thank the member for St. Catharines. I think we agree on a number of areas. I give credit to the government and the finance minister for tackling the deficit problem.
However, where I have difficulty is I do not believe they are going quickly enough to get to a balanced budget. That is the point I would have in debate with my hon. friend from St. Catharines.
We have to look at two experiences of where governments actually moved to balanced budgets and see what the consequences of those were, in Alberta and in New Zealand.
My home province of Alberta has tackled the balanced budget initiative in three years. In fact, it came out ahead of schedule and we are now starting to get the reward and the province of Alberta is beginning to pay down its provincial debt.
What happened during that time? How tough was the hardship? We heard a lot of concerns. I know that Ontario has similar concerns right now. If we ask the average person on the street what difference they felt and how severe was it three years afterward in terms of the cutbacks to their personal lifestyle or their operation in business, with the exception of health care in Alberta, most people hardly noticed it was taking place. In fact, many people felt it was long overdue.
There was a consolidation of school boards. For example, school boards which had been put in place in the 1930s during the horse and buggy era now were no longer needed with modern transportation and communication. One school board was consolidated from three or four and in fact was even more effective because it had a little more buying power.
We need to work quickly. We need some reward at the end. There needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel. By continuing to drag our feet on this we are feeling the pain because we are making all of these sacrifices to increase debt servicing.
The example I used was that $4 billion in spending cuts last year, which I compliment the government for but I believe should have been more drastic, were just eaten up by the increased interest on the debt.
If anyone is under the illusion of how severe this is, think in terms of the size of the interest on the debt and how quickly it is growing as a proportion of our budget. We should be alarmed by
that increase because it is threatening very important social services such as health care and old age security.
The hon. member has asked if we need more time to adjust. My assessment would be no. The Prime Minister of New Zealand during the time of the crash in 1982 advised to go as quickly as possible, because the faster we get there the quicker the rewards take place and then small business will be able to create jobs as confidence in the economy grows again.