I am glad that medicare was referred to. It was started by a CCF government in Saskatchewan in 1961. It was a popular idea that spread across this country. It came into being federally after the royal commission headed by Mr. Chief Justice Hall. There was a national consensus that we should have a national medical care program. Medicare was supported by an overwhelming majority of Canadian people and an overwhelming majority of the provinces before it actually was passed by the House of Commons.
This case is the opposite of the medicare example. No province has bought into the idea of a tax collection agency like the new agency the government wants to set up.
Another point is the idea of the quasi-privatization of the largest part of the federal government in this country. Forty thousand people work for Revenue Canada and the Liberal government wants to take this department out of the public service. Some 20% of the workforce of the Government of Canada will be, in effect, privatized.
There is no need to talk about the new right in this country. The alternative is right there. The united right in this country is the Liberal Party.
It is the Liberal Party that has downsized government to a smaller scale than we have seen since the late 1940s after the second world war. That is the legacy of the Liberal government. There is the privatization of CNR and what the Liberals have done to the employment insurance fund. We can go on and on and on in terms of downsizing government in this country. That is what the Liberal government across the way has done.