Mr. Speaker, I would be more than happy to highlight some of the political aspirations of certain parties.
Not so long ago I knew a party called the Reform Party which leaned a bit to the right. Some of its aspirations were cost recovery. A major right wing agenda is to look at cost recovery in health and for-profit health care. Cost recovery in national parks is a reality. It is a dream come true for a right wing government. Unfortunately we have a Liberal government that seems to be listening to this right wing rhetoric.
We have to consider the social conscience of the country. We have to consider the needs of our communities, our single parents and our students who cannot afford to use the parks, as the member said. We do have to raise these issues but we have to make it a Canadian initiative. We cannot talk from both sides of our mouth. If we care about our young people we have to invest our tax dollars in areas that will help them. We cannot talk about tax cuts and then diminish our services and programs. I am talking about program and service enhancement.
It is nice that the hon. member has raised this issue. Maybe we can get the government's assurance that it will keep the program and services enhancement, especially in budgets to come. As I said there has been a swing away from cutbacks and more expending surpluses into the future.
In some areas the infrastructure development is very unfair. I tried to drive to Ottawa on the Trans Canada Highway. It is a minefield coming here through northern Ontario. It is a single lane highway that barely has any shoulders.
There is an intercontinental highway system just to the south of us. Maybe that should be looked at in terms of infrastructure development and job creation. There are highways needed in western Canada. Grain trucks have been pounding our highways because grain is no longer being hauled by train.
These are the sad facts and sad results. We have to look at investments, which I call regional development investments. If the infrastructure program is a possible avenue to make this happen, I would very much welcome it, but it was not evident in the finance minister's release.