Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to my friend's question in terms of the debt. I appreciate his mentioning the progressive policies that in a sense led the country in some ways over the years, coming from the province of Saskatchewan, to things like medicare and others.
When Tommy Douglas was the premier of the province he said they would not spend a whole lot on a number of programs until the debt was eliminated. That was a long time ago. Ever since Tommy Douglas said that there has been a pattern in Saskatchewan politics, and I think my friend would have to agree with me.
The NDP would come in, or the CCF before it, and would eliminate the debt. Then it would get on with delivering the kinds of programs to which he referred. As long as we are paying out those big premiums or debt payments to bankers or foreign bankers and others, we are not using taxpayers money to invest in social programs and the quality of life that Canadians want, or in this case Saskatchewan residents wanted.
His theory was to pay down the debt. For years and years there was an interesting historical sequence. As a Canadian historian I used to love telling my students about it in class. The NDP-CCF would be elected and would work hard over a period of time to pay off the debt, to get rid of the indebtedness. Then they would be kicked out of office and the Liberals would come in and bring the province under extreme indebtedness. The Liberals would be kicked out and the NDP-CCF would come in, wipe out the debt again, get all the books balanced, and then Tories and Liberals would be elected and whip up the debt again.
Today in the province of Saskatchewan we are debt free after we inherited a massive debt load as well as a number of other things from the previous Conservatives.
My friend is right. We have to pay down the debt. The question is how rapidly and this is where we may have a debate. I think my friend would say that we should put a fairly massive amount on debt reduction. With all due respect to my friend, because I know he is serious when he says that, when in our country, the richest country in the world, the number one country by the United Nations standard in terms of the quality of life, 1.4 million children have to live in poverty, that is something we cannot ignore.
It requires action and action requires some form of financial outlay. I say yes to debt repayment. But let us not be so overly zealous in our debt repayment that we forget the children who are living in poverty today.