Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. member opposite. Quite frankly, he has me really confused.
I have read different media releases that the Reform Party has put out and they are all contradictory. Reformers talk about wanting to give a $2,500 tax break across the board to Canadians. They want to put new spending into defence, education, health and social services. Let us take a look at what they are talking about, and then I will pose my question to the member.
In Canada there are 30 million people. Of those, there are 14 million taxpayers. If we gave each taxpayer back $100 in a tax break across the board, it would cost the federal government $1.4 billion.
What is a hundred bucks? It is nothing. The taxpayer will probably want $1,000 or close to the $2,500 the Reform Party is talking about. That $1,000 would cost the Government of Canada $14 billion. The $2,500 that the Reform Party is tossing about would amount to almost $40 billion.
If the hon. member does all this spending and cuts all this money out of revenue, does this mean to say that the Reform Party will take Canada back into deficit spending?