Mr. Speaker, I hear another comment in the hinterland of backbenchers whose voice sometimes sounds like a trained seal.
However, we are not supposed to really answer questions in the Chamber. We are supposed to avoid them. I will do the unusual. I will answer this gentleman's question.
Mr. Speaker, you bet in our zero in three budget we had cuts and you bet we had the cuts he is talking about. To talk percentages is one thing. To talk numbers is another.
We proposed $25 billion worth of cuts over a three year period, an average of $8 billion a year. We would have found that area where we are wasting the most money.
I find it ridiculous and ludicrous that we have an initiative called eliminate child poverty by the year 2000, while a million children are starving in this country and we spend through our taxation system currently $9 billion through five different programs. Why can we not take the first billion dollars we take in and find those million children and give them the money they need so they do not have to be put up for adoption, so they have food, shelter and clothing? That is the waste that we are talking about. That is the kind of program we would like to see.
Another difference is, unlike the politically sensitive and politically nervous Liberals who are afraid, who do not have the political courage to do what needs to be done, we would have made the cuts in the first year. We would have started the cuts and in the first year the cuts would have been in the neighbourhood of $8 billion, or $9 billion, or $10 billion. The government has now made $7 billion in cuts two years later.
The difference is that by the end of this mandate the government will exit adding over $100 billion to the debt, whereas our program if adopted would have added only $50 billion. What this is all about is having the political will to do what is right for the Canadian taxpayer.
By not acting when they should have the Liberals have just deferred the problem, delayed the problem, run up the costs. The politicians who will follow this bunch, who will follow us, will have a greater problem because the interest costs are rising.
We had a balanced budget and that is what the government should have done. If a government is ever elected that has the political will to present a balanced budget and to do it and create a surplus budget like Manitoba, it should follow that model. That model is good. It should get some advice from people who finally can create surpluses. That is what we need.