Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to the presentations by the members of the Liberal government, this morning by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and now by this parliamentary secretary, but I think what we have heard repeats what we heard in the throne speech: a call for huge spending increases. Someone said that over the next eight years spending could go up by $37.5 billion if what was in the throne speech and what was mentioned just now by this member were actually implemented. This would be unprecedented. This is spending out of control.
I have heard words like responsibility, accountability and priorities, but then we can look at what was in some of the headlines we have seen over the last year: the HRDC scandal, the GST fraud and the billion dollars wasted on the firearms registry. The government has no credibility when it comes to managing the tax dollars that it collects now, and it is contemplating increasing its spending by this amount of money.
A poll that came out today shows that Canadian consumer confidence is down. Canadians are worried about what the future holds as far as the economy is concerned, and I do not think we have heard anything presented by the government in this prebudget debate that deals with any of these issues. I would like the member to comment on some of them.