Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to the member's remarks about not disarming unilaterally and remind him that that is exactly what the former Reform Party talked about back in 1995. Neither the member nor I were in the House at that time. If he cares to look back at Hansard around March 29 of that year he will find a speech by Elwin Hermanson the then agriculture critic for the Reform Party. He said “I have no criticism about the cuts to agriculture”. Then he went on to say that his only criticism my be that if the Reform Party were on that side of the House it would be cutting further and faster.
Indeed when the member for Selkirk--Interlake was a candidate for election in 1997, the Reform Party was still calling for $600 million worth of cuts to the Canadian agricultural program. Would the member care to comment on that?