There is no question, Mr. Speaker, that a lot of work needed to be done. There is also no question that a lot still has not been done. Quite frankly the government's priorities were out of whack in some of the areas.
No one was suggesting that we do not want to get rid of debt and deficit. Absolutely a government does that. However the bottom line is Canadians paid for those savings, not the government with all its fancy finagling and book work. Canadians paid with loss of services. Most Canadians did not benefit from decreased taxes or premiums or this kind of thing.
There is no question there is a lot of work to be done, but there was also a lot of wastage of government dollars. I believe that happened within the gun registry, not gun control. These are two different things. I strongly support gun control. A much better job could have been done to ensure safety for Canadians through good gun control rather than through the mismanagement of the gun registry or that whole registry process which I think was just a sham to appease some people, giving an impression that it was going to provide safety when it was not going to.
There was also the money that was wasted through the whole Groupaction scandal. When Canadians hear someone say, “It was only a billion dollars, a bit of wastage here and we had to do this”, my gosh that money would have gone so far in those communities experiencing poverty to ensure that there was proper housing, proper dollars for schools and proper funding for increased infrastructure, for roads. So much more could have been done.
It is fine to say that we are putting this in, but year after year the government cut so much that it could have done a great deal more. We have to see that money go to where it is needed and that is not happening.