Mr. Speaker, because our questions quite rightly and necessarily have to be limited, I will try to do a brief preface to each of my questions and then just ask for a brief response. Even a yes or a no would do.
Would my hon. friend admit that in 1993-94 when the Liberals started their expenditure reduction program, one of the key components was a one-third reduction to health care, slashed, bang, gone overnight to all provinces? I was a member of a provincial government at the time so I watched, literally, the blood on the streets when that took place. There was the ongoing reduction for a number of years in national defence and the RCMP, and taxes were increased 67 times from 1994 to 2000, when in face of an election the Liberals were terrified and they did a low tax reduction. Will he first admit that that is how the Liberals did their tax reduction, mainly with the slashing of health care to all provinces?
For my other question I will just use one of the areas which my hon. friend has referred to and I will ask people to reflect on the validity of what he is saying in the other areas. He talked about literacy programming cuts. Will he admit that according to our budget, $81 million this year is going from this government to literacy programs? Will he also admit that not one single organization with any existing agreement in terms of literacy, not one is having its funding cut?
What we are reducing in the literacy program is the millions of dollars the Liberals used to spend on consultations, millions of dollars to their friends to tell us that if people learn how to read they will do better.
As my granddaughter would say, hello, we already knew that; we didn't have to waste money on that.
Will he just admit these things? Will he admit how they reduced theirs? Will he admit that not one single literacy organization in the country that is delivering programs is having--