Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. There is no doubt that in the six years we have been here we have seen all kinds of examples of unbelievable waste by the government.
Every year, in fact four times a year, the auditor general produces reports that lay out all kinds of mismanagement. We must remember also that he has a limited budget. There are only so many departments he can look into at any one time. Certainly the TAGS program comes to mind as one of the most ludicrous, wasteful programs that has ever come down the pike.
I would argue that not only was it wasteful, it was probably one of the most cruel programs I have ever seen, because the government was setting out to train people for jobs that simply did not exist. Whole towns in Newfoundland were trained to be hairdressers. It is ridiculous to give people false hope and then ultimately take that hope away from them and at the same time insult the taxpayers by spending $2.5 billion.
Canadians need a small, lean government, an accountable government, a transparent government, with low taxes. That would ultimately benefit all Canadians because the economy would move faster and citizens would get real jobs that would allow people to provide for themselves and their families and to have the dignity that goes along with that. That is what we need, not a bunch of ridiculous programs that come forward, as we have seen in the past from this government, such as TAGS. We need real jobs. They will come when the government finally figures out that it cannot be the big daddy, the sugar daddy, to everybody and understands that it is the private economy which will create real jobs.