Mr. Speaker, with respect to the timing of the bill, all I said was that the bill was about 60 or 70 pages long and that I only had an opportunity to speed-read it once. There must be some things in there that I did not catch, but, yes, I have been sort of geared up to this for most of the time.
With respect to the actual debt, I will acknowledge, and I need to give some encouragement to the government, it could have spent the extra money but it indeed paid down some debt. However, there is a great curiosity here. The debt under the Liberal government, from 1993 to 1997, rose from $508 billion to $583 billion. That is the amount by which it increased. One could say that the Liberals inherited the deficit from the previous Conservative government. It does indeed take time to reduce the deficit and stop borrowing.
Members will recall that in the 1993 campaign we put forward plans for a balanced budget in three years. Eventually the government did it. Our planning proved to be accurate. We looked at the fiscal possibilities and it was possible. All the government did was put out a bunch of rhetoric about all the different areas where it would cut and it made up some that it thought would have the greatest political impact. It was not true. It actually did what we proposed and the world did not crash. There was a lot of panic there.
I would say that the amount by which the debt has been reduced happens to be $36 billion and that, interestingly, is exactly the amount of overpayments into the EI fund.
Some people think that the government has been capable of good fiscal management. However, instead of treating the EI fund fairly as a balanced fund, according to the actuarial requirements, it kept the money. It took $30 billion out of the pension fund of government employees. I would like to know where that money went. How come the debt did not go down another $30 billion on that account?
The government used it for phoney things like firearms registration. It is doubtful that it would have any effect on the reduction of crime at all. There are $3 billion overpayments just counting errors. There was the $1 billion boondoggle in HRDC. It goes on and on. There are indeed areas where good fiscal and prudent management could result in a great deal more money available for debt reduction.