Madam Speaker, I will not respond to all the remarks and all the questions. I would say that 90% of them are not relevant.
Our colleague is saying that we are hauling out things that are old hat. That is because the members across the way do not understand. We have been obliged to repeat the same thing to them for the past four years, because they understand nothing, even though we put the figures in plain view before them.
I would ask the member to take his responsibilities a bit more seriously and get his facts straight. Cuts of $42 billion over the next five years will not have a positive effect on the most disadvantaged. Nor will they improve the health network, since the provinces are being deprived of $42 billion in federal transfers for social assistance, education and health. If he puts a little more thought into it, I think he will understand things that he had not quite grasped.
The Bank of Canada has shot itself in the foot too. It has just said that the Minister of Finance did not do as his predecessors had done, which means that he has not done his job. He is supposed to send a signal to the Bank of Canada on the direction monetary policy is to take. If the government has job creation objectives—and he says there are job creation objectives and they are important—he ought to give a different signal to the Bank of Canada. He is empowered by the Constitution. He can give signals. He cannot direct monetary policy or set the interest rate every Wednesday, but he can give signals by indicating that the government considers employment important and that the inflation rate could rise a bit without killing anyone.
In the United States, the rate of inflation is over 3%, and the rate of unemployment is 5%. This makes all the difference between an intelligent policy—perhaps a more intelligent Parliament as well from time to time—and the Minister of Finance's very misplaced policy on interest rates. Our real interest rates are higher than those in the United States. He should find out about that. This party has a communications problem.