Mr. Speaker, I was speaking in the past tense so I thought I could do that.
In the Brian Mulroney government the leader of the fifth party in this place was clearly a member of that cabinet. He was a driving force in that government. I presume he would sit at the cabinet table and talk to Mr. Mulroney. He would talk to his colleagues around that cabinet table and they would make a decision.
Their decision would be whether to increase the deficit or not. Bob Rae did it for five years and incredibly damaged the finances of that province and so did this government led by Brian Mulroney and strongly supported by the leader of the Conservative Party today.
I will admit that many of the people in that party here today, in fact all but the leader, were not there. So they are new to this place. They went from 160 down to 2. Some would call that a brain drain. I think I would call it a brain strain. In any event, it was a dramatic impact and obviously a reduction in the size of that caucus and there was a reason. The people were fed up.
What do they do now? They come back and say “we can solve the problem, we will just cut your taxes and this is the model”. Mike Harris said in 1995 “I'll cut your income tax by 30%”. He has delivered 22.5%. He has absolutely done that. That is what he and Mr. Eves said they would do. They have cut the taxes. How have they done it? They have cut funding to health care. They have cut funding to education dramatically.
We do not mean to pick on him, but the member for Markham continues to talk in support of Mike Harris but he is not really sure. He has terrific ideas. I will give the House one of his ideas. This is a quote from the member for Markham: “The Liberals should use surplus funds from employment insurance to help save the CPP”. Is that robbing from Peter to pay Paul? This is from the same party that increased employment insurance premiums by 77 cents. It has no credibility, none whatsoever on this issue.
We will be strongly speaking and voting against this motion.