Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for paying attention to my speeches, but if he had paid a little closer attention he would have had the answer to what he is driving at.
I think we should wait until we see the further updated presentations from Saskatchewan and Manitoba later this week with respect to the figure. Whether the figure is $1 billion or $1.5 billion, this is what we should do to meet that.
First, we should try to meet it within the existing government spending envelope. We are simply going to have to learn to do that. If there is an emergency let us readjust our spending and tell the Standing Committee on Finance to do that. We have some ideas as to where to get that money. We would be interested to see if anybody else in the House does as well.
Second, I said in my reply to the throne speech that one of the answers was to cut taxes. That is still part of our solution. Why not cut taxes, including taxes on agricultural inputs? That can be done without increasing the deficit or the spending requirements of the government.
The third thing which answers the member's question is, if the House had listened to Hermanson when he was here, as early as 1995 he proposed the reform of the NISA and the setting up of a single trade distortion adjustment mechanism. If that had been done the amount of money in the NISA accounts today to deal with emergencies would be significantly higher than they are. We would be in a much better situation to address this problem.
The answer is to listen when reforms are proposed by the official opposition.