Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague for his excellent speech. I want to ask him a question. Why would the Conservative government burn through the $13.1 billion surplus that it had when it came into government and drain that down to a $1.4 billion surplus and put our country on the knife-edge of a deficit? Why would the government do that?
What most Canadians do not know is that this Prime Minister has a certain ideology about these issues. He believes and what he wants to do and is effectively doing is actually making the central government here in Ottawa a small runt of a government, while having powerful provincial governments. He believes that Canada is really just the sum of its parts.
I would argue that we are not the sum of our parts, that we are greater than the sum of our parts, that our provinces together make us greater than individual provinces. I would argue that Canadians from British Columbia to Newfoundland can have the same benefits, regardless of where they go.
Why on earth, from my colleague's perspective, has the government eviscerated the power of the federal government and made us much less than what we are as a nation? Is that not a crime against Canada, Canadians and our history?