Mr. Speaker, I think it is only proper that I take the opportunity to comment on what my hon. colleague has said.
I really want to focus on the budget plan. The member made reference to it in his opening remarks. The opposition party has gone to great lengths to provide an alternative to the upcoming budget. I really want to focus on that area.
When I reviewed the plan that was released, essentially what I found was that a lot of the promises were really based on some widely optimistic revenue assumptions.
When one combines the optimistic revenue and naive expenditure assumptions, it really results in a very unrealistic picture of future budgetary surplus. If one were to look at a three year period and go out to 2001-2002, they are actually predicting surpluses of about $30 billion to $35 billion.
That is actually much more optimistic than the private sector forecasters which is what the government uses in order to build its budgets. We go to the private sector. The private sector provides a consensus of what these forecasts should be and that is what we build into the actual budget.
The Reform plan assumes a revenue growth on average of 5.5% for the next three years. It is almost two times the private sector consensus. It also ignores the cost of maintaining existing programs like old age security and equalization.
There are other incremental costs of maintaining other existing programs. The member has not in any way included economic prudence in the revenue forecasts. That means that if the economy turns out ever so slightly worse than what was predicted, the plan is derailed.
The question is how to deal with the impact of a slower economy based on these overly optimistic assumptions. Either programs have to be cut or taxes have to be increased. Which is it?