Mr. Speaker, what did Labradorians and Newfoundlanders say to him when he cut $20 billion out of health care? I would like to know that.
The Reform Party of course would not cut spending for health care and social programs. We would increase it. We have made that pretty clear. We would increase it by $2.5 billion.
My friend across the way has asked a question and I think he deserves a serious answer.
In the last election campaign we laid out exactly where we would cut about $9 billion in government spending. We sent it out to about 15 million households across Canada. I invite my friend to revisit that, but I will touch on some of the highlights again.
As we said then, we would make cuts to the CBC. We think that CBC television should be a private broadcaster. We think it is time, in a day and age when there are all kinds of private broadcasters providing services across the country, to privatize the CBC. We made that very clear.
We would make cuts to the Department of Canadian Heritage. We think that all of these grants for special interest groups are ridiculous. We think it is ridiculous to spend $100,000 on a dumb blonde joke book. I am sure even my friends across the way would question whether that was a wise expenditure.
We would cut all the pork barrel spending that goes on in regional development. It is a very unfortunate joke on Canadian taxpayers when they are paying for all kinds of patronage deals that benefit friends of the Liberal Party. We think that is wrong. We would cut the bureaucracy of Indian affairs. We have made that very clear.
Those are some of the areas where we would cut. If my friend would simply go back and review Fresh Start, he would see that we lay out the entire menu for him. He could go through it and he could use it to guide him when he wonders again where these cuts would come from.
The final point I would make is that it is interesting to me at a time when the government has cut so drastically in health care, and even with the increases it will still be about $4 billion shy of where it was, that it has still managed to ratchet up overall spending pretty significantly, by about $4.5 billion this year alone.
I have a question for the member across the way. Why is the government spending so much more on frivolous programs like millennium grants and things like that? If the hon. member cares so much about health care, why is it increasing in areas like that when it is cutting the heart out of Canadian health care?