--over 30% and by slashing health care transfers to the provinces.
The single most important priority of a federal government is to defend our sovereignty and to protect Canadians, which is done foremost through national defence, and the Prime Minister's first choice was to cut defence. The first priority of Canadians politically is health care and the Prime Minister's choice was to cut and slash health care.
If we take out the cuts to health care and defence, the Prime Minister reduced his own Ottawa Liberal program spending on things like corporate welfare, grants and handouts to interest groups, and subsidies to bloated crown corporations like the Liberal CBC by only 3%. We saw 30% cuts to health care and defence but only 3% cuts to corporate welfare, to companies like Canada Steamship Lines which received $162 million that this government tried to cover up in its response to an Order Paper question earlier this year.
That is his fiscal record: opposition to restraint, opposition to free trade, opposition to pro-growth policies and hypocrisy on the GST. When he was forced by the markets, he slashed health care and defence, while barely touching the bloated and wasteful spending.
The ugly face of Liberal corruption has now been revealed for all to see. In the 1995 and 1996 budgets, the now Prime Minister claimed that he would put an end to the waste in Ottawa, that he would go through the spending with a fine tooth comb. Did he ever, because that was the very year the ad scam sponsorship program started and $40 million a year in unregulated pork was stolen by Liberal friends, according to the Prime Minister himself today. That is his record of fiscal management.
Finally, thanks to the hard work of Canadians in increasing wealth in the mid-1990's, and because of the higher taxes and cuts to health care and defence, the budget was balanced.
What has the Prime Minister done since? We have seen enormous spending increases, triple the combined level of growth in inflation and population. This budget is a continuation of old fashioned, 1970's style Liberal profligacy. In this budget spending was increased by $10.1 billion, up 7.6%, up to a record of $143.4 billion, a massive $41 billion or 40% more from the $102 billion program budget in 1996-97. The budget pledges to spend another $13 billion over the next two years.
This is a government whose spending is out of control. It has a Prime Minister who knows how to exercise fiscal restraint by raising taxes, slashing health care and cutting defence. He made the wrong choices. I hope he pays for it in this election.