Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, my honourable colleague from Cambridge is out of touch with reality. Unfortunately for him, he does not have contact with the men and women in the street. He does not have contact with the middle-class workers in our society.
He says this is the first budget without a deficit in 30 years. I would like to remind him that all but nine of those years had Liberal ministers of finance, one of whom was the present Prime Minister. That is when the country experienced the highest interest and inflation rates.
The member for Cambridge was trying hard to tell us earlier about the treats the government will be giving out, but he forgot that employment insurance has a surplus of $12 billion right now. Why not lower the contributions of our poor workers? Oh, no. We certainly cannot touch that.
This morning I had a call from a representative of the AFEAS group in my riding complaining that, in the future, the average family income will be calculated in order to establish spousal pensions. Who is this going to penalize? Women for the most part, once again. But the hon. member did not mention that.
He made no mention of the $42 billion cut to the provinces. When I say he is cut off from reality—and I shall end on this—we need only listen to the Journal de Montréal . Vox populi, vox Dei: Joseph Bourque “He is sending the bill to the provinces”; Claude Allaire “He is not doing much for the middle class”; Claude Grenier—