Madam Speaker, listening to the hon. member opposite I had a great deal of difficulty restraining myself.
I cannot imagine how the Liberal members opposite manage not to choke when they speak in a debate like the one on the budget tabled yesterday.
It is as if we were living on two completely different planets. I believe the hon. member is from Ontario. Before making those kinds of remarks, he should come and travel across Quebec and the maritimes. Having done that, if he still cannot show more compassion, he may at least not get so carried away about how good this budget is, as he described it. I noted a few things. I will first make a comment and then put a question to the member.
The hon. member praised the work done by the Minister of Finance, saying that the minister was working with standards widely used in the G-7. I am not sure how widely used they are in the G-7. But one thing is sure: he was unable to tell us if these standards were widely recognized here, in Canada, by Canadians, so that comparisons could be made.
Neither could the hon. member bring himself to admit that the finance minister had his wrists slapped by the auditor general precisely because this is not a transparent approach allowing figures to be compared from one year to the next.
In fact, to find out what the actual breakdown by province is today, one has to request from senior Canadian officials special tables, which show in black and white what the Government of Quebec told us, and that is that the province is getting no more than $150 million for health care. That is my first point.
Second, he said that the Liberal government's priority for health care would be to make people more accountable and to make the management of the health care system more transparent. They dare brag that they will establish audit systems to ensure that care is actually provided.
I believe I am in the Parliament of Canada, which has the role of protecting the Canadian Constitution, although some would say it is not my job. The Constitution, which parliament must honour, must recognize at least that health care is under provincial jurisdiction. Let them not boast to Canadians watching us that they will establish accountability.
Another odd thing in the speech by the previous member is that the Liberals are accusing the Conservatives of increasing the country's debt. The Conservatives were in office only two terms. What the members opposite forget to say is that the deficits started under Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I would remind the member that we were not in a recession at that point. People who want to provide a lesson should reread their history.
The federal government says that Canadians can now trust it and it will not spend foolishly, or something like that. Can we trust those opposite?
They got elected in 1993 and said they would scrap the GST. From 1993 to 1999, that is six years. This is the sixth budget brought down by the current government. It had the opportunity to eliminate the GST, but not a word was said on that in last night's budget. Should we trust the federal government?
I will give another example of what happens when the Liberals say we should trust them. Following the 1995 referendum in Quebec, they supported a motion in this House recognizing Quebec's unique character. This implied that if Quebec wants to do things differently, it should have the right to opt out of programs. But what did the government do at the first opportunity, when it started making a surplus, last year? It created the millennium scholarships, which was yet another intrusion into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
The Liberals could have eliminated that program in yesterday's budget. They did not. This is another example of an unkept promise. And they are asking us to trust them.
I have a question for the hon. member. I do not see many members from the maritimes here today, but they could put that question to him. Health and education are areas of provincial jurisdiction. Fisheries, as far as catches are concerned, is a federal jurisdiction. What is there in the finance minister's budget for fishers, who will lose everything in May of this year? This is a federal jurisdiction. The federal government could not care less.