Madam Speaker, I find this post-budget debate rather amusing.
We find that the party of the right, the Reform Party, is emphasizing the reduction of debt and lower taxes, which one expects. We find the party of the left, the NDP, wants us to spend more on programs. That is understandable also. But at least these two parties are clear where they stand.
We find the leader of the PC party still on the horns of the same dilemma he faced in the election campaign, finding most of his support in the maritimes, which usually want more spending, and yet still trying to pretend to be a party of fiscal responsibility. He suggested that the minister should have a red face. It is my contention that the Tory leader should have a red face for even pretending to comment on this budget after the mess the last PC government left this country in.
He suggested that we embrace the policies of the PC government. While it is true that the PC government articulated some of the policies which we have embraced and we have implemented, the problem for it was that it did not have the courage to implement any of those policies. That is why we were left 10 years later with a Canada pension plan that had not been revised. We are the party that had the courage to set the fiscal house in order.
The Liberals, they say, abandoned the policy of projecting UI figures. Of course we abandoned the policy of long term projections because Canadians had totally lost faith in long term projections after years of the Tories missing every projection they ever made. Our two year rolling targets are far more realistic because we have hit our targets and indeed have exceeded our targets.
He comments on the cost of Pearson airport. The Canadian people are happy to have Pearson airport now in the hands of a non-profit local airport authority where the profits are poured back into the public facility as opposed to lining the pockets of friends of the former government.
He suggested certain provincial finance ministers are condemning the budget. But we expect that because provincial finance ministers always want more money and more power. What we have to point out to the Canadian people is this. Yes, we did reduce the transfers to the provincial governments but by a percentage that was less than what we cut our own program spending by.
If the people, for example, in the province of Ontario are noticing a difference in health and education programming they might look to their own premier who cut that spending by five times the amount that we cut our transfers by. So they will be smart enough to lay the blame where it belongs, at the desk of the provincial premier.
However, my question for the leader of the Progressive Conservatives is this. When are we and his supporters, who are few but there in the west of Canada, in Ontario, indeed in my riding, going to find out whether he really stands for keeping the fiscal house in order and cutting spending or whether he stands for all the money to reducing the debt, or whether he stands for, as the people in Nova Scotia want, lots and lots of spending?
When is he going to be clear and honest with the Canadian people as to where his party sits on the political spectrum so that they can decide whether they support him?