An hon. member opposite said it was two years too late. It was a heck of a lot faster than the previous government.
We deregulated financial services, energy and transportation. Those policies helped this government. They helped lay the groundwork for this government to continue to eliminate the deficit. In fact, we could say that this Liberal government is a government of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately its original ideas are not sound and its sound ideas are never original.
The hon. member talks about the CHST transfers and the fact that our party espoused a tax point solution to this issue. How can the member say that transferring greater authority to the provinces to determine the future of their health and social spending is a bad thing when he is part of a government that has reduced health and social spending by 35% over four years? How can he say that the federal government can be trusted with that responsibility when there are a lot of provincial governments out there which are fearful of further draconian cuts in the future from a federal government that is as heavy-handed as this one has been?