Mr. Speaker, I was glad to hear some of the tone and the content in the speech from my colleague from West Nova. He seems to have come to the realization that a country does not cut its way to prosperity. We do not build a great nation by cutting, hacking and slashing everything that we fought to build up in the post-war era, in that period when we were building this great country.
His own party went on a 13 year rampage, cutting and hacking and slashing everything we hold dear in terms of the institutions by which we define ourselves as Canadians. He seems to have had an awakening because he is being critical now of the current government for cutting too much.
Will he agree with me on one fundamental principle? Has his political thinking matured enough in this way? Does he agree that it was fundamentally wrong for his party to allow offshore tax havens to flourish and prosper all through these years, and for Canadian businesses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by setting up dummy paper companies in Barbados and losing all that tax revenue? Has he come to our same conclusion that it was fundamentally wrong of his government and that this 2006 budget should have plugged those outrageous tax loopholes, brought those tax fugitives back within our revenue regime, and then we would have those resources to build a great nation with?