Mr. Speaker, Prince George is a fine city. I live in Skeena and visit Prince George as often as I can.
The question I have for the member is twofold and the first part concerns the United States. Within the U.S. congressional district there is a separate accounting office which was established to prevent what we have seen the Canadian government do, which is to collect more revenues than it was expecting in order to play with the numbers. I am sure his government, when it was in office, perfected the ability to stretch and extrapolate. At the end of every budget cycle, lo and behold, his government would run out to the truck, throw a bunch of cash in it and drive around the country dumping it as quickly as it could.
Would he support having an arm's length accounting office in this country and, at long last, removing the politics over the numbers and just allow the debate to exist over where the priorities need to be?
I also could not help but hear the finance minister talk about the $80 a year benefit to university students. Would the member comment on how his party was able to, year in and year out for 11 years in a row, have students leaving university with an average increase of $1,000 a year in debt. Students in Canada under his government's regime were having an extra $1,000 of debt tacked on every year. The government is purporting to change that trend but it is in fact just supporting it.