Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment and then ask the hon. member a question.
When the government took office back in 1993, the national debt was approximately $480 billion and the annual deficit was about $42 billion. It took three years to turn that around and get the first balanced budget. Today we have paid down a little over $50 billion on the debt. We are still at a national debt level higher than we were 10 years ago. The single largest expenditure in the annual accounts of the government is debt interest, a little over 22% of the overall expenditures of the government.
When we got into this situation of balancing the budget, people started to talk about the fiscal dividend. The fiscal dividend to Canadians, I believe, is not having a surplus in a year but rather taking that surplus to pay down debt and save interest expense on the debt. That is the permanent savings. That is what can be reinvested in new programs.
My final comment is simply that the surplus of $9 billion in the last fiscal period was ostensibly due to increased corporate revenues from corporate taxation. It is not guaranteed for next year, so we could not come up with a program for Canadians of $9 billion and have that expense of $9 billion each and every year because we cannot count on it. It is only a one time savings.
The member asserts in his speech that the $9 billion surplus is the people's money and it should be paid back. Does he not agree that paying down the debt and saving about $3 billion of interest since this government took office is an important investment to make so that we can have ongoing programs for all Canadians?