In school I was taught that is called plagiarism. When you copy someone else's written material and claim it as your own, it is plagiarism.
The finance minister is the beneficiary of low interest rates. He has allowed our huge debt to grow. However, he will not give credit where credit is due. He is taking full credit.
For example, I will give a quote that I could use as mine: "In politics, perception is everything". I could claim that is my quote but I would be lying, it would not be true because that quote belongs to none other than the Prime Minister of the country who is more interested in creating perceptions and smoke and mirrors than he is about the reality of life in Canada.
I gave the finance minister an F for another reason. He failed to tell the Canadian public about the debt. It was mentioned once in his budget speech. He talked for 60 minutes and he mentioned the word debt once. He has added $111 billion to the debt. He says that he has broken the back of the deficit and improved the economy when the debt now is over $600 billion.
Should he be so lucky to be in the government the next time around, I feel sorry for him when the debt grows to $650 million or $700 million. Even with the low interest rate policy he is going to have a hard time making ends meet and paying for the departmental programs in place now.
What if interest rates go higher than 5 per cent, 6 per cent or7 per cent? What if they go back to 9 per cent? I am very afraid of that.
I heard members opposite during my intervention asking what we would have added to the debt. We would have added $45 billion to the debt as opposed to $111 billion. We would have balanced the budget in three years from when we took office. We would have a surplus this year ending 1997.
I am sorry, I talked right through my time. I do want to ask the member to make one more comment on the vision of the government. Why does he really think it has a vision when the Prime Minister and the justice minister say: "We will handle the problems one at a time".