Madam Speaker, where do I begin?
First, I want to acknowledge that the province of Saskatchewan reduced its provincial sales tax in its last budget. It was the first provincial government to have a balanced budget. It runs the most efficient government in Canada. My friends laugh. I would ask my friend to suggest a province which is more efficient in terms of the number of provincial employees per capita.
While the federal government was cutting back drastically on social programs to fight the war on the deficit, and while other provincial governments were doing the same, one province was not. One province decided not to cut social programs and actually added to the amount of money expended for hospital programs and health care. That province was the first to balance its budget.
There is a very clear alternative to look at in this country compared to all of the other provincial governments combined.
My friend's question is legitimate. When we advocate a particular proposal, we ought to have a way to fund it. Let me answer by way of example.
We have suggested that the tobacco companies get out of the funding of cultural and sports programs. The cultural and sports program says that if they do that, they will then not get the appropriate funding and will be unable to continue.
By adding less than 1¢ to a package of cigarettes in tax, they will provide more money than is expended in all those areas right now. That is for one penny a cigarette pack.
I would say that if we cannot eliminate tobacco advertising from all sporting and cultural events and the cost will be to impose a 1¢ increase on the taxation on a package of cigarettes, that is where we would get the money. It is easy for my hon. friend to say where will they get the money. I should tell him one more thing. I do not think he is aware of it.
That is, during our hearings—I know some of my hon. friends on the finance committee will acknowledge this—when Dr. Jim Stanford came before the committee, he showed that if the government had merely frozen spending at the 1995 levels and waited for economic growth and lower interest rates, the finance minister would have beaten his own timetable and still have reduced Canada's deficit to the lowest level in the G-7.
Put simply, the cuts that took place were not necessary to achieve the deficit reduction targets of the Minister of Finance. I think this is very important to point out. I might just add to my friend's question that if they are putting on targets to reduce the debt now, which I think is appropriate, we should also be putting targets on to reduce the level of unemployment in the country.