Madam Speaker, I see reality every day in my riding of Vancouver East. I understand what it is about for people who live in poor housing, who are without work or who do not have adequate health care resources and so on.
I ask the hon. member to check the facts. The budget did not increase spending for health care. If the member checks the facts, program spending is actually decreasing from $106 billion in 1997-98 to $104.5 billion in 1998-99. If we just want to look at education, there is not one increase in dollars for the transfers to the provinces in education.
The government has announced a shell game, a $2.5 billion millennium fund over a 10 year period or $250 million a year. By the time that program starts we will have lost $3.1 billion from post-secondary education.
Those are the facts and that is the reality. That is why tuition fees and student debt will continue to go up despite the bits of window dressing the government has brought in.