Mr. Speaker, the hon. member certainly has a strange way of looking at what is a premium increase or a premium decrease.
When we took office premiums were roughly $3.07 going to $3.30. We stopped that. The next year we brought premiums down to $3.00, then down to $2.90 and then down to $2.80. Those are not increases, those are decreases.
We have stated as a government that it is our intention to continue to bring those premiums down. We will do this responsibly, not in the way the leader of the Reform Party stated the other day, that there would be a massive cut.
Virtually every commentator has said that if there was a recession, the first thing a Tory government would have to do would be to hike those premiums, which was exactly what it did in 1989 and 1990. This is how the Tories put us into a terrible recession.
If members wonder why I talk about the Tories, it is because they are the kissing cousins of Reformers, on the extreme right.