Madam Speaker, I should remind the hon. member that I was a member of the Conservative Party and left in 1977 when there were still reasonable budgets in this country. I was not part of the party when it went through the great spending program.
The hon. member asks me would I have spent that money and would I have listened to the public. It was not the public they were listening to, it was the professional spin doctors and pollsters that have become such a professional part of this business of politics for both the Liberals and the Conservatives.
If the hon. member were to go out and listen to the public and watch the public, he would understand why in western Canada there really is not any Conservative Party any more. They stopped listening to the people.
I can remember being at meetings in western Canada with members of the Conservative Party who were friends of mine. They would try and tell us that we did not understand, this is the way we have to do it in Ottawa. I told them I did not understand them because they were going to be kicked out of office. That is exactly what happened.
It is the people in this country. We can stand up in this House and make all the speeches we want. I have been in and out of this business a few times. I had talk shows and radio shows in between. If we are not out listening to the people we will not understand. That is why there are 60 Reformers here and why there will be more in Ontario after the next election.
The people of Canada told the Conservative Party what they were doing in the years it was in office by taking the party from one of the largest majorities in Canadian history to the lowest number of seats that any major party has ever held in Canadian history.