Madam Speaker, as most Canadians watch these types of debates take place in the House of Commons, they are certainly attracted to the word surplus. A surplus sounds like a good thing and he is right, a surplus is a very good thing.
When we deal with business, and I have a small business, and we see a surplus at the end of the year, that is good. When we build a budget in our family and we live within that budget, and we have a surplus at the end of the year, that is good. I think every Canadian family wishes that they could have a much greater surplus on the kitchen table at the end of the year, but when governments have a surplus, that is not necessarily good. When governments have a surplus and it has done it because it has been able to reduce the size of government or streamline and make things more effective, that is positive, but the government does not do it that way. The government does it on the backs of taxpayers.
The Liberals are saying that they are going to make it more difficult for Canadians and businesses to have surpluses because they are going to make government bigger. Higher taxes equals more government. More government equals more regulations. More regulations equal more red tape. More red tape equals more bureaucracy. More bureaucracy equals more taxes. It is a continuous cycle.
We are encouraging the government to take the fiscally prudent way and recognize that there are certain needs. We need to ensure that we can help those who are poor, those who are sick and disabled, but it is wrong to continually be taking money from one middle class family and giving it to another middle class family and telling them that if they accept these values, they will get extra cash dollars from the government. Picking winners and losers is wrong. Smaller government and allowing the private sector a role in prosperity is the direction that the Conservative Party would take.