Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member that the way the Liberals got to this balanced budget was by one of the initiatives which was brought in by the Conservatives when they were in power, the free trade agreement. The free trade agreement has yielded incremental tax revenues of approximately $25 billion.
The hon. member said that the government helped small business by taking 400,000 Canadians off the tax rolls. How does that help small business? I did not see any tax relief in here, like reducing the employment insurance premium.
Yesterday we heard in the industry committee that as high as 30% of small and medium size businesses could be out of business by the year 2000. I did not see any tax relief to help those businesses move into the next millennium.
When I look at the debt level, now that we have balanced the budget and the Liberals put in a contingency reserve of $3 billion, I would have brought in a balanced budget or debt reduction law. The way they are dealing with the $3 billion, it will take 200 years to pay it back. They could have done a lot more to assure Canadians of the long term stability of this country.