Mr. Speaker, this is a very curious budget. Most of what is the budget is not in the budget.
When we look at the numbers, only 7% of the spending commitments in the budget are in this budget year. Ninety-three percent of those commitments are in subsequent years. Therefore, all is not what it appears to be.
The Minister of National Defence and the hon. member talked about turning the corner and a new found commitment to the military. We still will have to wait a little while longer to turn that corner. That new found commitment is still out there several years before I think the government intends to find it.
While 7% of the budget is spending in this year, when it comes to the military, less than 4%, or less than one twenty-fifth, of the great commitment of the government to spend actually will happen in this budget year. Everyone knows that next year we will have a new budget that could in fact have very different numbers.
I want to know from the member what that means for Canada and what that means for the Canadian military. Will we lose that?
The member comes from a constituency with a lot of working people. I thought many of them would relate to a letter which I received recently from a constituent. It says: “Help. Both myself and my husband reside in Bradford and have three children. We work full time, pay more than our fair share of taxes and are still trying to make ends meet. Paycheque to paycheque is now the norm for us, for a lot of middle class people. We don't have any extras to do anything with our kids. I even have to pay extra tax to have my middle child tutored because she is finding the curriculum to be somewhat difficult. We don't even qualify for the child tax credit as we earn too much. Yet at the end of the day we pay so much in taxes that our net income is equivalent to our deductions. We both make good money, if you want to call it that--