Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of different issues there. I hope the hon. member will forgive me if I do not get to all of them.
He touched on students. I will try to answer the member's questions about what this budget does for students. As I said before, this budget is not remarkable only for what is in it but also for what is not in it. The hon. member forgot to mention that the government has already cut seven and a half billion dollars in the health and social transfer. Transfers for education have been dramatically reduced by this government. When the hon. member says that the government has thrown a bone to students, he has forgotten to say that it already took about 10 bones away. He should mention that in fairness.
The same thing applies to the disabled. There have been billions of dollars in cuts to health care. The disabled more than any other group rely on health care. In fairness he should point that out. We do not have a problem with the government contributing more money toward the disabled; that is not a problem. But he should in fairness point out that the government has dramatically reduced transfers to the disabled.
With respect to the child tax credit, we have no problem with money going into programs for poor people in this country. That is a good idea. We have no problem with that. Our point is that if you keep raising taxes and hurting people, poor people in particular who have the least income and cannot afford tax increases, then you are undoing any good you could possibly do by giving them more money through a program to alleviate child poverty.
With respect to technology, if you raise taxes through the roof, which is what this government has done, and then you throw people a bone in a pre-election budget, that is superficial. People understand exactly what the government has done in the past. Those cuts are still hitting home today. So let us not be misled.
What was in the budget with respect to agriculture? I did not hear anything. Was there anything? There was nothing in there, despite the fact that we have tremendous transportation problems in the west and we have a wheat board which many people would argue is completely dysfunctional. So let us not suggest there was something in there when there was not.
With respect to youth, I simply must say when the member talks about a youth strategy, what people really want are jobs. This country has a 17 per cent youth unemployment rate. It is horrendous especially considering the government ran on a promise of jobs, jobs, jobs. We do not need more programs, what we need are more jobs.
Finally with respect to CPP-