Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. friend for that question.
We are not saying that the debt should not be paid down. What we are saying is that it should not be done on the backs of the poor, as the Liberals have done when they took $46 billion from the employment insurance fund to pay down the debt, giving the money to the big banks. That is what the Liberal Party has done. The working men and women who have lost their jobs are the ones who have paid down Canada's debt. That is how the Liberals achieved that, and they did it badly. That was not where the money was supposed to go. That is where the surplus of $7 billion generated in one year went, the surplus of $7 billion in employment insurance.
Today, they have to invest that money in health, because it was the Liberals who made the cuts to that field in 1994. It has come to the point where patients are kept on beds in the hallways and some die there. They should be ashamed of that.
The debt has been paid down on the backs of human beings. Perhaps there was a deficit in Canada, but now there is a human deficit. That is what I am talking about. When there is a surplus, it has to be distributed properly.
My hon. colleague said that funding was earmarked in the budget for early childhood and so on. But not until 2009 and 2010, that is four or five years from now. In addition, there is absolutely nothing in this budget for students, who are being put into debt like never before.
As for the tax relief for workers, it amounts to $1.39 per month; that is not even enough to buy a large coffee at Tim Hortons. The tax relief for workers is $16 per year.
The government has nothing to brag about. The $12 billion surplus this year will continue to increase by the billions because the changes brought about in by this budget will not begin taking effect before 2009, 2010 and 2012.
In the months and years to come, Canadians will see what the Liberals have really done. In my region, I meet people on the street who are mad at the Liberals, first and foremost because of the sponsorship scandal. That is all I heard last week and last weekend. It is a disgrace that taxpayers' money went to friends of the Liberals who, in turn, made contributions to the Liberal election fund. People have had it with all that.
There are people who go to hospital because they are sick and cannot even be admitted, the health system is backlogged in terms of operations and we have lost doctors and specialists.
I think that I have answered the question of my hon. friend from Manitoba.