Madam Speaker, the member who just spoke was responding to something I said earlier. I hope I have the time to take that up with him because he makes a good point when he talks about how national standards are enforced.
However, while I still might have the ear of the Leader of the Opposition, it seems to me that there was a contradiction between what the member just said and what the Leader of the Opposition said in response to me when I asked him whether or not his party was committed to maintaining the cash transfers. He said that the Canadian Alliance was committed to it, committed to legislating it into law and that the cash transfer could not be unilaterally reduced.
Minutes later the hon. member got up and read from a Reform Party policy resolution that he said he had something to do with, which was the policy of the Reform Party and now the policy of the Canadian Alliance. He has the resolution in front of him but I do not. He may want to have another look at it as it talks about the total conversion of all cash transfers to tax points.
Someone is not levelling with us here. Is it the policy of the Canadian Alliance to convert all cash transfers to tax points? That certainly is what the member just read into the record, as the blues will show. If that is the policy then what was the Leader of the Opposition doing telling me that it is the policy of the Canadian Alliance to legislate the cash transfers? Is the Canadian Alliance legislating against itself? Is it going to legislate cash transfers so that when it forms the government it cannot implement its own policy? What is going on here?