Mr. Speaker, I would acknowledge that the president of the Chamber of Commerce might not be lining up to join our parade.
As a matter of fact, there was a headline in one of the newspapers, “Big business bashes budget”. Okay, I will accept that criticism. It is the people who work for those big businesses, though, who are going to benefit from this.
Let me be clear. There is a debt reduction plan. We have already retired $13 billion in marketable debt. That is done, off the books, gone. We also have a debt repayment plan with a two year fiscal plan based on prudent economic planning assumptions.
We are taking the $3 billion contingency fund which, over the last three years, was used to eliminate part of the $42 billion in deficit we inherited from the Conservatives. It will go to debt reduction. That is $9 billion.
It is totally misleading to say that we are not attacking the debt. We would like to do more, but we have to maintain a balance.