Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member for Peterborough used the words, the “extension of the gas tax”, meaning that it was a Liberal program.
In terms of responsibilities, I do know that the cities are the children of the provinces, but Canadians are Canadians whether or not they are city dwellers. There is one taxpayer. We collect their money in the way that the province and city do. When one member in a family needs help, others in the family should extend that help.
I explained it to the member. Maybe he was not paying attention. The cities today in not having funds are having to raise property taxes.
The member is new and was not here, but I will inform him that when we took over from the then Conservative government, this country was unofficially bankrupt. It took us several years to balance the books, to eliminate the $42.3 billion deficit and to start paying down the debt. It was not until a couple of years later that we had money surpluses. What did we do? We had one-third tax reduction, one-third investment in the programs that Canadians wanted, such as the millennium scholarship fund, funds directed to students, and of course we lowered the debt as well.
The hon. member talked about coming to Ottawa. When he is next campaigning, I ask him to go to his constituents and tell them not to talk to him but to go to Ottawa, and I would bet he would not return.