Mr. Speaker, I must say that I would have been greatly surprised if the hon. member had stood to publicly denounce the Minister of Finance's budget. That would have been really something to hear.
However, there are two issues I would like to talk about briefly and ask the hon. member a couple of questions relating to them. One of course is the issue of bracket creep.
I hear hon. members across the way taking some kind of credit for the elimination of bracket creep. How many years has the government had to eliminate this? I do not think it has had as much to do with the government's decision on this as it has to do with the people like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The Reform Party of Canada has had the elimination of bracket creep as a major policy principle for the last five years. We have been asking the government to do this for at least five years, and more than that outside of the House. My first question to the hon. member is why in the world did it take the government so long to eliminate this when it knew it was bad for Canadian taxpayers?
Second is the matter of health care spending. I am sure the hon. member faces the same kind of problems that I do in my riding with a deteriorating health care system which is inadequately funded. The major culprit is the federal government and its plan over the last few years to gut the health care system by cutting back on health transfers to the provinces.
Over the last five or six years it has taken out somewhere in excess of $20.5 billion. Now it is telling us that out of the goodness of its heart in this age of surplus it is going to put back in maybe $14 billion over the next few years. With the kind of mathematics I grew up with, this leaves us with a shortfall of $6 billion.
Does the hon. member believe that $2.5 billion, $1 billion this year, about $30 per Canadian, is going to fix Canada's health care system? Does he really think that is an adequate response to the deterioration of health care in this country? I would be very happy to hear his responses to these questions.