Mr. Speaker, it is interesting how the Liberals can look at accounting in one way for themselves and in a different way for the average Canadian.
I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. If as a business person I decided to buy a building in three years and I wanted to earmark money I had earned for that building, would the government allow me to use that as an expenditure? I would think not. I would think that would be part of my income, my profit as a company. I would pay taxes on it. Then I would report the spending of it in the year which I spent it.
It was very clear with this millennium fund. If the government had not planned new spending on a new millennium fund there would have been a $3 billion surplus. That is what this government does not want to address with the average Canadian, with the taxpayer. This was not a balanced budget; this was a surplus budget. This government chose to spend the surplus in a way it felt would get the government more brownie points with the Canadian taxpayers, the Canadian voters.
If the government wants transparency, it should talk with Canadians about a millennium fund and see if Canadians support a millennium fund over federal government dollars going into the provincial coffers for education. Under the Constitution education is a mandate of the provinces. If the federal government wants to transfer money to the provinces for education, then so be it. But for the federal government to be spending surplus dollars and hiding it from the taxpayers, that is not right no matter how we cut it.