Mr. Speaker, we were impressed by this member's commentary during his intervention, in particular the demonstration of his capacity to count to four and also his recitation of the one and only Shakespeare quotation he knows. We appreciated that contribution. Please, not more, not more.
There were really two questions in his intervention. He wants us to give the federal government credit for this balancing of the budget. We have already argued that we have pressed harder than any others in the House for the achievement of that objective so of course we are pleased when we get to that point.
However there is something the government must recognize and apparently the member missed my entire point. There are four things wrong. That is a number he should be able to grasp. There are four things wrong with the federal fiscal house. One is the deficit, another is chronic overspending, another is the high level of debt and another is the high level of taxation.
Any member in this House who is under the illusion that the fiscal house of the federal government can be fixed by fixing only one of those flat tires has an awful lot to learn. What we are endeavouring to do is get the member beyond this point to the point where he recognizes that increased spending by the federal government is the wrong course. A new attention to debt and tax relief has to be given. That was the whole thrust of my talk.
The member's allegation is that somehow what Reform is proposing is divisive to the country, or in other words tax relief is divisive but spending brings us together. If high spending brought us together this ought to be the most united country in the world. What Reform's tax relief measures do is something that is beneficial to every part of the country.
My time did not permit me to translate our $20 billion of tax relief into its regional impacts, but let me give the member those regional impacts. If the government implemented that package of $20 billion in tax relief measures per year, the nine measures listed in our program, this is what that would deliver per year to the regions of Canada.
Atlantic Canada would get $1.4 billion per year, more than what the government has ever paid in regional development grants. This is given to the many rather than to the few and you do not have to be a friend of the government to get it. Quebec would get $4.5 billion a year in tax relief. To Ontario, $7.5 billion a year. To Manitoba and Saskatchewan, $1.4 billion in tax relief. To Alberta, $1.9 billion. To British Columbia, $2.5 billion.
I suggest that if we gave that kind of tax relief to every part of the country, it would do more to stimulate our economy and bind us together than the divisive and patronage-riddled spending of the federal government.