Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for my friend across the way who has some credibility on finance issues. He was on the finance committee for a number of years and I believe he was the chair as well.
The government has done some things in the right direction, although I am sure it has been pushed, pulled and dragged screaming to move toward debt reduction and the kinds of things that my friend mentioned.
He said that we needed the flexibility to manage our programs. He also talked about the debt contingency of $3 billion, which, if it is not needed, will go to debt pay down. He mentioned that $52 billion has been paid down on the national debt. What he did not mention is that we still pay $40 billion a year in interest on the national debt. If debt repayment was a priority during the 10 years when the economy was rolling along quite nicely, we would see that number decreased. In many ways the government has failed on that missed opportunity.
My friend mentioned gas taxes. The former finance minister, current Prime Minister, talked quite a bit about giving gas taxes back to the provinces. The provinces are now paying $7 billion a year and getting back $700 million. Over 10 years that would be the equivalent of taking $49 billion from Canadians and putting only $7 billion back. That is quite a cash windfall for the government, raking in tax dollars and not putting them back into infrastructure. I believe that is also a missed opportunity, in the way that the government is gouging Canadians through gas taxes.
My friend alluded to what he calls the sponsorship issue, which I think is a redefinition of the term sponsorship scandal, but I would like to ask him about the missing $100,000 million. We do not know where it is. Another $160 million missing through--