Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. One of the biggest failures of the Liberal government across the way is the complete lack of attention to the environment. In fact the University of Victoria recently did a study that said Canada had one of the worst records in the industrial world and that on 25 environmental indicators we now rank 28 out of 29 countries in the OECD.
The minister chose to put some $15 billion on the national debt. He knew there was a big surplus coming. Why did he not put some of that money into the environment? He had an option. Why did he choose the national debt entirely and ignore the environment?