Mr. Speaker, I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on the relative merits of withdrawing funding for various social programs, because there is ample evidence for anyone who cares to look. Around the world, the countries that have the highest standard of living, the best prospects for jobs and, in fact, the lowest unemployment rates are all countries that intelligently limit their social spending. They intelligently limit it so that they are not encouraging people to live off welfare or take advantage of generous handouts. They limit their social engineering. There is ample evidence to show that is the case. The provinces that are successful here in this country have in fact done that.
I remember when the minister of finance of British Columbia wanted to put a limit on the collection of welfare: that a person had to live in the province for three months first. We were getting droves of people coming into British Columbia, which had the most generous welfare collection scheme. The federal government threatened to reduce our transfers because we wanted to put some sort of intelligent limit on the abusers of the program.
There is a lot to answer for on that side of the House in terms of intelligently limiting social transfers.
In terms of the debt repayment the member mentioned, yes, the government has paid down a bit of the debt, but again, one of the most common criticisms of the budget I have received from my constituents is that the government has not paid down enough of the debt. Anybody knows that if one pays down one's debt one gets much more money to spend and does not waste it on interest. The government is still blowing away more than $35 billion a year on interest. That is enough to build 150 brand new Lions Gate bridges in Vancouver every year. It is a huge amount of money. If the government had concentrated on paying down the debt earlier, we would be in a much better position. It would still be able to blow money on social programs but would not be taking it away from highways and other important projects.
Finally, in terms of health care, if the member thinks that throwing more money at the problem is the solution, he has his head in the sand. Everybody who has studied the problem knows that is not the answer. There need to be structural reforms; that is a fact. We need to be having an intelligent debate about how to repair this. One of the things we could do is encourage the provinces to be creative and make a much greater use of the private sector in the delivery of health care as a way of reducing costs.