Madam Speaker, I smell the distinct odour of Liberal arrogance across the way when the hon. member mentions polls.
I remind the hon. member to look at the recent byelections where we had his own party running scared in places where we had not even run candidates before. Let us get the record straight. That is truly the poll that really matters.
I want to touch on the issue of perks. The hon. member has touched on a bunch of trivial issues but I want to point out one thing. His pension alone would pay for all of those trips to the parliamentary dining room where four, five or six of our members may go from time to time to get a subsidized meal for a couple of dollars off. His pension would pay for any first class air fare that our members take. His pension alone would pay for any of the perks he referred to 10 times over.
I remind the member to put this into context. It is very important that Canadians understand to what lengths the government members went to protect themselves from all the cuts they were to make to everybody else well ahead of the day the budget came down. That is absolutely unbelievable but they did it and they will pay a price for it.