The member opposite who is chirping, with due respect through you, Mr. Speaker, is not quite sure which party she wishes to be part of.
The point is that many of the policies that came out of that party were in fact put forward by that member and others. There is just no consistency in the opposition position that yesterday we should have cut and today we should pour money in. Where do the opposition members get their figures? Do they do their homework? I would suggest not.
Three billion dollars sounds like a good figure: $2 billion in defence spending, another $1 billion in security spending. Cut non-priority areas. Cut HRDC.
The damage that the official opposition has done to the economy of this nation with the attacks that it launched some time ago on the HRDC ministry is, frankly, immeasurable. The level of confidence of the people in the community about programs is evident in letter after letter I have received from people in my own community who have accessed HRDC programs to help them in job losses, to help family members in education. These are very positive programs.
One of the areas the Alliance would consider to be a non-priority would be something like ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. That agency sees that Atlantic Canada has opportunities for investment for young entrepreneurs to grow businesses and to create jobs. The Alliance would simply eliminate that. At the same time it would wipe out HRDC programs. It would eliminate FedNor, I am sure, or at least drastically reduce it. The work that FedNor does in northern Ontario is extremely important and is value added that can be seen on the ground.
We get general platitudes that somehow we should reallocate financial resources from low and falling priorities. Yet all the opposition is doing is seizing on the concerns in the media, the fear that is being propagated by much of the action and many of the questions in this place, whether they are about immigration, denigrating refugees or attacking bureaucrats. That is all we hear instead of the opposition actually being constructive and saying that it is going to support the government's efforts in the area of fighting terrorism.
Will we get credit in the follow up to the budget next Monday for money that has already been committed? We have committed $280 million to our fighting terrorists campaign, to $250 million that has been put into the system, to $47 million that has gone to CSIS and to our security personnel to try to boost them, the government having recognized there was a problem that led up to September 11 which was primarily south of the border but that we should not be blind to the fact that we indeed could be subject to similar kinds of attacks.
I think our government has reacted responsibly and calmly. We put forward the budgetary measures needed to give our people the kind of support they need, but what do we hear? We hear the Leader of the Opposition standing up and demanding that our troops be sent to war. There is a cost to that, of course, but it does not matter to the opposition that the United States and Great Britain said they will withhold their troops from the ground war until they get more secure knowledge and there is in fact an opportunity to do some peacekeeping.
No, they would just send them off. They are there. They have their boots on and they are all laced up, so send them off to war. Whose children do they think they are sending into harm's way? I think Canadians are very concerned about that kind of knee-jerk reaction, just as the motion suggests, that we should “reverse the unbudgeted spending”. Imagine if we did not have the flexibility in the unbudgeted spending areas within the control of the government following September 11. What would have been our option?
I think our only option would have been to spend it anyway and start running a deficit and if there is something that I do not believe any member around here can criticize it is the financial record of the finance minister. It is a fact that in 1993 when the government was first elected it was faced with the mountainous problem of a $42 billion deficit overdraft, with spending more than we were bringing in. The finance minister, the Prime Minister and the government have eliminated that and have started to run surpluses. As a result, we are in a position to respond when there is a crisis such as that of September 11 and we were able to do so.
The opposition once again chose to put forward a motion that it knows is not based on reality. First, opposition members know that the budget, given that this is Tuesday afternoon, in all likelihood has been put to bed and has gone to the printer, I would think, if we are getting it next week.
The opposition is picking out areas where it knows it will have little impact so that next Monday opposition members can stand and say the government did not listen to them, that they had asked to spend money here and there and to change the policy on unallocated moneys within the budget process and it was not done. It is a little bit of a mug's game. The reality is that the responsibility of the government is to say to Canadians that we are doing the things that need to be done to provide safety and security for them and their families and that at the same we will not run into the deficit financing that put such a great burden on previous governments. It is the only responsible way to go.
What would have been interesting with an opposition day opportunity like today would have been if the opposition had wanted to talk about the successful signing of an agreement yesterday between the two nations of Canada and the United States to try to improve the situation at our borders. Would it not have been interesting to hear stories being discussed in this place to inform Canadians about the IBET system, where we are co-operating on enforcement at our borders, about the fact that we are streamlining our visas, about the fact that we are signing a safe third country agreement between Canada and the United States? Would that not have been a constructive debate and a terrific opportunity for all of us in this place to inform Canadians about some of the successes?
It is very interesting to me that it took the attorney general from the United States to make the statement that Canada's borders are indeed not porous for us to get a headline in the media stating that. When we say it, it tends to get ignored. Now the reality is out and these are the issues that I think Canadians want to hear us talk about.