Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member for Peace River.
He talked about bad public policy. Since when is bringing interest rates down, since when is bringing unemployment rates down, since when is bringing in and delivering the largest single tax decrease in Canadian history of $100 billion and since when is reinvesting strategically in things like health care, children and poverty bad public policy? Since when is paying off debt and reducing the deficit to zero bad public policy?
What I object to is those members opposite always need to bring in the Americans. They are lovers of the Americans. Listen to how they invoke the name of George W. Bush. Look at how they always want to cozy up to American cultural, economic and social ways. Canadians object to that. More to the point, they reject that.
Is it bad public policy for a person who has carved out his career by saying that taxpayers' dollars should be used wisely and then turn around and use $800,000 of Albertan taxpayers' money to do something that $60,000 could have done? I ask the member for Peace River if that is good public policy.
I also want to ask the member for Peace River—