Mr. Speaker, I do not know where to start. Maybe I should focus on one aspect, and that is the debt. The member seems to want to talk about the debt. He started off by dealing with the growth of the debt.
The member will well know that when the government was formed in 1993 it inherited a deficit scenario of some $42 billion. That deficit had to be dealt with each and every year. The annual deficits are added to the national debt. Yes, it went up. Yes, interest charges went up, but we had to deal with the deficit to stop the leakage. Now we are getting surpluses.
The member said that a particular economic publication indicated the surplus would be something like $7 billion. That may very well be. The member will well know there was a one time transfer on behalf of health of $3.5 billion which, based on consultations with the auditor general, will be expensed in the current year. That takes the projected $7 billion down to $3.5 billion, which is precisely what the government is projecting.
If the member uses numbers from a month ago to somehow compare to the forecast as was outlined in the budget, does he not think that he should also take into account other charges against that surplus spending of the fiscal dividend which will be charged against the current year so that in fact what has happened is exactly what should have happened?