Madam Speaker, I do not know what figures the hon. member is reading. My recollection of the budget numbers is that spending absent debt has basically been flatlined for the past two or three years. The management by this government has resulted in the ability of the government to significantly reduce debt. I would have thought that the hon. member's party would have been more than supportive of the notion that the nation's debt should be reduced. I do not see how the hon. member thinks he can have it both ways.
I cannot quite get my head around how the hon. member and his party in particular can criticize the mini-budget. Reducing taxes with cuts, which I understand to be the most significant part of the hon. member's party platform, by accumulatively $100 billion, is a pretty significant cut for Canadians across the board, both at the upper and lower ends. I cannot quite see how that can be criticized. I cannot quite see how putting back $21 billion over five years into the health care system can be criticized as a terrible thing. Over that period of time $21 billion is a significant sum of money.
We have also put money into technology research. We are in the bizarre situation of spending 9% or 10% of our gross domestic product on health care and having absolutely no idea how it is spent, where it is spent or by whom it is spent and of having to beat the provinces over the head just to have a reporting system. I support the position taken by the government on this for the simple reason that I would not want to continue to send money down a sinkhole until we knew exactly where the money was going and how it was to be spent. I would think I would have the support of the hon. member for the initiatives taken by the Government of Canada on that issue alone.