Mr. Speaker, this is pure demagoguery. In the 1995 budget, the government announced that it would be cutting its own expenditures by 19 per cent over three years; the outcome: 9 per cent. Three billion in cuts were not made. It did not announce that it would cut 19 per cent and
would then hike them back up again afterward. Really now. That is not what happened.
Moreover, according to page 67 of the last budget, 54 per cent of the government's reduction in expenditures is due to cuts in social transfers. The rest is the $23 billion more the taxpayers have had to pay over three years. Those are the facts.
Does the Prime Minister realize that his commitments, like the GST, have been trampled under foot?