Mr. Speaker, I think the member for Markham—Unionville was inaccurate in his assessment of what we have done here. The fact is that we have found $1 billion in savings.
In the last campaign, Canadians clearly indicated to our party that they were sick and tired of seeing the waste and mismanagement in recent years. We committed to Canadians in the last election that we would do things differently in Ottawa so we have found $1 billion in savings.
I would like to put this into perspective. We found $1 billion in savings out of the $200 billion a year that is spent by the Government of Canada, which is the equivalent of a household that expends $20,000 a year finding $100 a year in savings. It is entirely reasonable and entirely appropriate. It is what Canadians do day to day in the management of their budgets and they expect the Government of Canada to do the same.
Furthermore, we have increased spending in this budget by $5 billion. Some of the $1 billion in savings we have found will go, in part, to this new spending on, for example, our new child care benefit that is providing $1,200 a year for each child under the age of six.
With respect to some of the programs that the member mentioned, let us put this all into perspective. We found $2.3 million in savings out of the museums program out of the approximately $250 million spent by this government on museums a year, or about 1% of the budget. We are focusing the remaining money on supporting the country's museums and cultural heritage.
In addition, we have increased funding for the Canada Council for the Arts from $150 million this year to $170 million. We are putting this in place after years of the previous government freezing funding for arts and culture in this country. We are very proud of our achievement.
How is the member opposite able to stand in this House and tell this House that this government should not deliver and expect results for programs, should not expect those programs to be delivered efficiently and should not be ensuring that the priorities that Canadians have asked us to focus on are delivered as we campaigned on?