Madam Speaker, listening to the hon. member for Malpeque, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, one is tempted to take him seriously. However, his partisanship clouds his thinking. According to a basic law of physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In preparing his budget, against the revenues the Minister of Finance also wrote a list of expenditures.
I would like the hon. member for Malpeque, who primarily represents middle-class Canadians from Prince Edward Island, to comment on the 10% increase provided for in this estimates for the Senate. A $45 million budget for 104 senators. This represents roughly $450,000 a year per senator. Given the amount of work they do in a year, one might say they are paid a very high hourly rate.
I would also like the member for Malpeque to tell us what he thinks of the 12% increase in the budget for the Governor General of Canada and his staff. During last week's break, I asked more than 250 of my constituents to name the governor general and not one of them knew who he was. I told them he nonetheless cost them $12 million a year. Yet no one knew his name.
I would like our colleague from Malpeque, who with his wife runs a successful dairy business, whose dairy herd has a good yield, why there is absolutely nothing for the farm community in this budget he just praised, a so-called forward-looking budget. What is left for agriculture after the WGTA, which provided a grain transportation subsidy for Quebec and the maritime provinces, was eliminated, after the subsidy for industrial milk producers was phased out over five years and after almost all research stations were shut down? Nothing.
Back home in PEI, he will boast about this budget for the future. In that sense, the mind of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is clouded by partisanship because there is nothing in this budget for the middle class, which really needs tax relief.