Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the Liberal finance critic as he went through his criticisms of the new budget that we are all dealing with in this House. I agree that there are many missed opportunities in this budget to provide commitments to Canadians on issues that we in this party certainly care about around child care, education and the environment. Certainly the Conservatives are squandering an opportunity when they have a large surplus at this time to provide the services that Canadians need.
Members will recall that in the 1993 election campaign that member's party produced what was called the red book. The Liberals highly flaunted it to the Canadian people. They made huge commitments at that time, 13 years ago, for a national child care program that would be affordable and accessible to all Canadians.
In my riding of New Westminster--Coquitlam in British Columbia, the waiting lists for child care spaces can be very long. There can be 100 families on the list for one child care space. It is a real crisis. Yet his government, in 13 years of constantly promising, did not deliver even one child care space in this country, not one. I am amazed to see the Liberal critic stand there and not even blush. He did not even go red in the face when he said it was the fault of the New Democratic Party that there was no child care program in this country. It is shocking to hear that kind of rhetoric.
I want to ask the Liberal critic how he can say such blatant nonsense in this House and expect to have any kind of credibility with the Canadian people when we know that his government had such a long time to provide these kind of services that are needed by Canadian people and did not do it.