Mr. Speaker, not that I have to, but I would be willing to table the fairy tales, edition one and edition two, if the member would like to have them just as a reminder of what those members have said.
The member was not in the House in the eighties. Not once between 1988 and 1993 did the Liberals, including the Secretary of State responsible for International Financial Institutions, who is sitting in the House right now, or the finance minister, for that matter, ever stand up in the House and vote for anything that would reduce either the size or the cost of government, never.
When the Liberals left office in 1984 they bragged that they left the cupboard bare. They said that they had left the country in such financial destitution that the Conservative government could never recover and would never get re-elected. Surprise, we did. Basically they are reaping the rewards for a lot of tough things we did, things we had to do and were forced to do.
However, when they resort to hitting the most vulnerable in our society, the sick, the poor and the elderly, simply to balance their books, there is something wrong. There is something wrong when they have a $40 billion surplus in the EI fund which they want to use to pay down debt to balance the books. When the mini-budget comes out we can rest assured that they are going to lay down a lot of cash on the national debt right on the backs of the poor, the working poor, the sick and the elderly. The transfer of funds into health care, education and welfare has been decimated by the government and by no one else.
That is the sad legacy on which the Liberals are going to have to run the election. It is a record that I would not be particularly proud of. I do not think they are going to be able to stagger around too many parts of Canada promoting it.
Their latest hero to come on the scene is Captain Canada, all the way from Newfoundland. Perhaps we should call him Captain Kangaroo because he stood up in this kangaroo court called parliament and voted for these draconian cuts to health care that almost decimated his own province. He went back home and almost admitted the same, saying “I can go back home and fight as premier for this province and restore health funding”. He is the very man who stood up in the House and took it away. That is the phony of all phonys.
He is coming back now to save Canada. He is saving Canada only because the Prime Minister wants to keep Paul Martin off his back. It is a political game that even the Liberal caucus understands. Putting a man like that into cabinet—