Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to persuade all those Liberals over there that what they are doing today with this so-called itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny mini-budget is totally inadequate.
Unfortunately I will not have a great deal of time because I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley. Therefore in my limited time I will address just a few of the issues. First, I would like to talk about debt. If we wanted to congratulate the Liberals for anything, I guess we should congratulate them for their excellent ability to spin an itsy-bitsy thing into something big.
One of the things they are bragging about is their debt reduction. When the Liberals came into power in 1993 the total debt was $508 billion. Of course they had that record over $40 billion deficit which was left by the Conservatives. For about eight years the Liberals were riding on the fact that the Conservatives gave them that $40 billion deficit.
How much mileage have they spun out of the fact that the deficit is now gone? I am amazed they even attempt to take credit for it. The deficit would have been gone if they had done nothing, which I guess is pretty well what they did.
We have had a very strong economy with our neighbours to the south. We have had a very excellent balance of payments internationally. Consequently our economy has done very well. Lo and behold the deficit is gone.
That has been on the backs of the taxpayers. It has been on the backs of the employers and employees in the country from whom the government incorrectly, illegally, unlawfully has taken billions of dollars out of the EI fund. It has no justification legislatively to do that. In more gentler terms we would call it theft when one takes something from someone to which one is not entitled. I am not accusing any individual member of that. It is the whole government that has simply stolen money, the billions it is not entitled to, from employers and employees.