Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for my hon. colleague. There are many concerns I could talk about regarding the past ills of the Liberal government over 13 years, but we are going after the Conservative side right now.
I thank him for talking about the cuts affecting some of the most vulnerable in our society. We are getting a lot of mixed signals from the government. We got the supplementary estimates the other day from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The estimates very clearly show some pretty drastic cuts to science, health and oceans management. These are the estimates; I did not make them up. The estimates also show quite a reduction in full time equivalents in terms of the people who will be working in the department.
We asked the minister in committee about it. He said in the House and in committee that there will be no cuts to his department. He gave us his own estimates showing cuts and yet he stood up and said that there are no cuts.
The member is absolutely right. We are getting conflicting messages out of the government.
For example, the Minister of National Defence said maybe a military solution is not the answer in Afghanistan. The next day he asked for more troops and tanks.
We just want some consistency out of the government. If we could get that, then maybe we could have a proper dialogue in the country.