Madam Speaker, I always appreciate debating with my colleague, which happens quite often on the industry committee. We have a great time. We often agree actually, but in this case there definitely is no agreement.
I mentioned specifically that I am in favour of much more money for roads, perhaps more than the Alliance is proposing. However, as I explained in detail, and as the member for St. John's East explained this morning, that type of mechanism specifically does not work.
I am also very against transferring a lot of the powers and resources of the federal government to the provinces as the Bloc and the Alliance have talked about in many areas. It is one of the reasons I ran for politics. I believe in a strong federation, as the Bloc member said this morning, where everyone should cooperate and coordinate and work together.
I find it very interesting that the proposals coming from my colleagues whom I have such great camaraderie with right beside me, that so many of them are spend, spend, spend. This item would increase either our income tax or the national debt because it is an extra expenditure. It does not come from nothing.
They want to spend more on farmers, on defence and on health care and those are all great. I am in favour, but coming from me that is natural as a Liberal. But when the taxes and the national debt are increased to pay for all these initiatives, there has to be a right-wing party somewhere in Canada that the people can vote for in the hopes of cutting taxes and cutting the national debt. I think those are admirable objectives, but hopefully there would be a good right-wing party that could offer these platforms consistently so that the people who like those things, which is a fair assumption, could vote for them.