Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to address Bill C-67, the surplus allocation bill.
I know the minister would not want to mislead Canadians about the true facts regarding either the history of his own government's performance or even the history of other governments' performances, so I just want to start by addressing some of the issues that he raised in his speech and then I will say a little more about the bill in particular.
First of all, the minister said a number of times that his government balanced the budget, but that is not true. In fact the taxpayers balanced the budget and they paid a very heavy price to do it.
As the minister knows, first of all his government cut health care. It made the deepest cuts in Canadian history to balance the budget. It did not cut all the transfers to spending for grants and contributions. It did not cut them at all. In fact those stayed steady through that period, but the government certainly cut health care. In other words, Liberal friends were well looked after during that period but health care had the deepest cuts ever in Canadian history. It really was not the government that balanced the budget. It was health care workers, patients and Canadians.
During that time, we saw a number of tax increases, 67 tax increases, typically small, sneaky tax increases through that period. Who bore the brunt of that? It was the taxpayers. It was not the government that balanced the budget. It was the taxpayers who balanced the budget.
I also have to point out that GST revenues were very important in helping to keep that budget in balance, and that is the government that said it was going to get rid of the GST. Last time I checked it was still there. We are still paying that 7%. I see it every time I purchase something. The government certainly counted on the GST to balance the budget, even though the Liberals said they would get rid of it.
I noted another thing, and the minister partially touched on this. He talked about all the revenues coming in. I note that many of them are resource revenues and in fact revenues from companies that do business in the United States all the time. They are bringing in lots of revenue. The Liberals said they were going to get rid of the free trade agreement. They were going to rip up NAFTA but thankfully it is still there and it is providing a lot of these revenues.
Therefore, I just reject the premise of the minister's argument.