Mr. Speaker, I am going to try again with this member because the last Liberal member was not too good on figures. I guess I am going to have to work quite slowly for this chap too, him being a Liberal.
I would like to talk about this millennium fund. We will not get into the rhetoric about it being monuments and so on and so forth. Let us just deal with some simple math.
We know that the government is in debt almost $600 billion as a result of the Conservatives and the Liberals, the two old parties, but that is another story. The reality is that Canada owes almost $600 billion. Every dollar of the money we owe has to have some interest paid on it.
If we have $3 billion of the $600 billion that is not paid down it costs money. We will have to pay interest on that $3 billion. I think the member would have to agree with that.
If this is not smoke and mirrors, if we are not just saying we are going to take $3 billion and put it into a fund, and indeed that money should be going to debt repayment, where is the money going to come from that they are suddenly going to say it is spinning off so much? I will use some numbers just so that we are talking about some hard numbers.
If we were talking about 5%, if the government said we are going to put $3 billion into this millennium fund and we are going to be spinning off 5% of that or $150 million a year, will this member admit that the $3 billion is going to cost an additional $150 million in interest payments alone?