Mr. Speaker, I can understand why the member would regard the assumptions we have made as being unrealistically optimistic given that his government has followed a deliberate policy of under projecting growth in order to politically manage the political aspects of the surplus problem.
Clearly the Minister of Finance does not want his spendthrift Liberal colleagues such as the distinguished lady who manages the heritage department grappling for dollars in a pinata contest for the next Liberal leadership.
I am sure he has a hard time getting to sleep imagining what would happen if he were to tell his cabinet colleagues the real truth about the surplus.
We know from his treatment over the last two or three years that the government has overshot its surplus projections by an enormous amount. I do not think it is an entirely bad thing. I think it is good that the government has used very conservative projections.
I think that for political purposes it has been a prudent approach generally. I also think it is good to include a contingency amount, as this government has done, of $3 billion a year.
In constructing our own projections we consulted with all the private sector forecasters and indeed the government's own forecasts and we chose assumptions for future growth which is slightly less than the average projection among private sector economists.
Furthermore, we did include a contingency provision. I am trying to find the precise amount. I will have to take that under advisement and get back to the hon. member. However, we did include a contingency amount and we did try to select projections for growth, inflation, employment and revenue growth which were reasonable and prudent.
The point is well taken. We can have an argument I suppose about whose projections are more prudent but I think frankly ours are more accurate. In the last two or three years the projections that Reform has made have been closer to the actual outcome than those made by the government in its own budget documents.