Mr. Speaker, that is a very reasonable question.
First, I do take back referring to the Minister of Finance by his name. I was referring to the Minister of Finance. And so there is no mistaking, if the word dictator can be used in a positive sense, that is what I was trying to do. Perhaps I could use a different term. I will be serious with my hon. friend because I respect his views and the work he does, but too much power now sits with one cabinet minister. There is too much influence.
My friend knows because I heard his comments earlier that this budget gives the Minister of Finance and the Department of Finance even more authority and even greater power in terms of disbursing funds. This very clear trend is a serious concern which I share with him and which others have shared with me. His criticism was well placed. It was a term that could be misconstrued. I did not mean it in a pejorative sense. I meant it in a neutral sense with dictator meaning one single person deciding on government policy.
My friend said that a major accomplishment of this government was balancing the books. I do not think a single Canadian would say that was not the case, but let us acknowledge how that balance was achieved. That balance was achieved by dipping into the EI fund. By dipping into the EI fund and taking billions of dollars in employment insurance premiums, it was easy to balance the budget. The other way to balance the budget was to devastate the health care system. My friends over here would suggest there were some tax issues involved in this as well.
Any government can balance the budget if it slashes the meaning out of a society. Anybody can do that. If the government shut down every university and every hospital, it would balance the budget. It is that simple. But what kind of a country is that? What kind of a government is that?
Not only does the government dip into the EI fund, which some people have suggested is illegal to do, but it is now going to dip into the pension fund of the federal government employees. The government is going to dip into $37 billion of a pension fund for which it has no authority. The government is going to have to bring in legislation to be given that authority.
My second point was to acknowledge that the surplus comes with a great deal of pain. Were the people who were most pained by this budget cutting rewarded now that there is a surplus? Were the homeless recognized? No. Were the unemployed recognized? No. Were the people who need affordable housing recognized? No. Were the farmers acknowledged? No. Were the RCMP recognized? No. Were the people in the fisheries industry recognized? No. Were the miners recognized? No. Were the forest workers recognized? No. Who was recognized?
By the time we eliminate all of those groups, the nurses were hacked out, the doctors, the teachers, the professors, and on and on and on, there was a handful of people who liked this budget. My suspicion is that they probably hang around Bay Street.
I think I made my points.