Mr. Speaker, the member does not know what he is talking about. I drew recommendations from every section of the report. In terms of immediate priorities, it talks about reallocation. It states there must be cuts in any program areas to offset new security spending and that:
--new spending on security and defence could lead to a deficit, the government must balance this new spending with spending cutbacks elsewhere.
There was not a cent in spending cutbacks elsewhere. The committee referred to its previous recommendations to limit spending to the rate of growth of population and inflation 3%. Spending in this budget was increased by over 10%.
He says that the recommendations in the latter part of the report are for some indefinite point in the future. Not so. The recommendation on the capital tax was for “immediate” elimination of the capital tax and to move immediately toward the break-even rate unemployment insurance.
I know the parliamentary secretary is embarrassed for himself and his minister because they went through this public relations exercise, spent probably millions of dollars of House resources to produce this report and to placate interest groups to make them feel like they were being listened to, and then they just threw the report in the trash, along with fiscal responsibility in this budget.