Mr. Speaker, I noticed the minister likes to take credit for a lot of issues with regard to the deficit. We should perhaps talk about the record of the government.
Indeed the deficit has gone down by $25 billion during this term. However, new government revenues received from the taxpayers have gone up $25 billion. So what are all these government cutbacks about? They are about paying more interest on the debt. The Liberals do not want to talk about the debt, but it will exceed $600 billion next month and will be by their own estimates $619 billion next year.
If the Reform Party's platform had been adopted by this government we would have already balanced the books and we would be starting to see no more cuts in program delivery. The program delivery cuts we suggested, you are in many cases exceeding in what you are doing and we very much question the priority-