Mr. Speaker, let me first talk about the positive aspects of the question. He talked about the funding for St. John's Harbour. It has been long fought for, long needed, and is now promised. Hopefully it will be delivered upon.
I would suggest to the member though that the funding came through a special program because former ministers had been telling us in the House that it must come through the regular infrastructure. One cannot take $100 million out of regular infrastructure funding for any project and expect to be able to do everything else that has to be done.
If the member would check Hansard there is one member who recommended to the Minister of Finance, months before he brought in the new program, that we needed a new special infrastructure program to deal with major projects. He would see that I made that recommendation here and so I do take some credit for it.
The member talked about transparency and accountability. These are great words. The government would be transparent and accountable. We saw what it did a couple of days ago in getting $59 million more to put into the administrative side of the gun registry, not counting the other associated costs.
It was quite transparent that the Prime Minister cracked the whip and forced people on their knees to come here under threat of expulsion from caucus, or that he would call an election where a lot of them would know that they would not be back here, and forced them against their will and against the wishes of the country to vote for that kind of funding. It was very transparent but certainly not accountable.
He also talked about balancing the budget and giving money to health care. The government is only giving back a portion of what it took away and that is why it balanced the budget in the first place, along with raking in money from free trade and the GST. At present, HRDC is reducing services in rural Canada and playing games with the local bureaucrats because it has been told to cut programs. It is transparent but it is certainly not accountable to Canadians. No wonder it balanced the budget, but it did so on the people in the country who really need to be helped.