Madam Speaker, I sat and listened attentively to the hon. member. He just made a comment about how mothers and fathers raising children on social assistance were in essence paying tax and that the budget did nothing to deal with that segment of society.
I caution the hon. member that as a result of the 1998-99 budget any Canadian family raising children would pay no net federal tax on an income of $30,000 or less. I am not saying that is in any way an achievement for which we would stand, pound our chests and say our job is done. We obviously need to do more in terms of helping families raise children and ensuring that Canadians have a better quality of life. However, with those two budgets, Canadian families who are raising children and earning $30,000 or less will be paying no net federal tax.
As well the hon. member made mention of the fact that health care funding was somewhat of a sham. I caution the hon. member that the restoration of funding to the provinces with respect to health care took two forms. One was the $8 billion over a period of time. The $3.5 billion immediately was meant to address what the provinces were saying and what Canadians were saying.
The member sits on the finance committee. He toured the country along with myself and other members of parliament. We heard from Canadians who said that they needed additional moneys put back into the health care system. The $3.5 billion allows the provinces to draw that down as they see fit. I understand Manitoba is drawing down its portion as quickly as it can. It can do so over a three year period. I caution the hon. member when he says it is a sham. I would tend to disagree. Hopefully the additional information I am providing will give him an opportunity to clarify his position.
In terms of trickle down economics, I am certainly familiar with the theory. It is a something the United States was very accustomed to following under Reagan and Reaganomics. However I would disagree with the hon. member. We have put in place a number of economic policies which deal with certain segments of society. We targeted our tax cuts initially. We took 600,000 Canadians off the tax rolls at the low end.
I go back to the elimination of the 3% surtax. As soon as we had the money we eliminated it for individuals who were earning $50,000 or less. We targeted our approach to those at the lower end of the income scale.
With that information I only hope the hon. member would say that he might not agree with everything the government does but he could agree with the thrust and the direction of the government and urge us to do more. I welcome the opportunity for the member to urge us to do more as Canadians are doing. We fully respect the priorities of Canadians and are committed to doing more.