Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I agree with him: communities are in serious trouble. A few years ago, an article entitled “Quebec cut in half” was published in Quebec. The article was about how young people were leaving small towns for large urban centres and how the population in towns and villages was declining. When a small town has only one sawmill that employs most of the people in the town and that company closes, there is a very real risk that the town will also close. This is a tragedy.
My colleague is right: the government had the means to help these people, but the Conservative ideology dictates that this money be used to pay down the debt. That is why we are criticizing the government. It could have done both. My finance colleague also knows this, because we suggested helping these people over two fiscal years.
In addition, even after these two fiscal years, the government could have paid down the debt. But when a government is totally closed-minded and expects people to look after themselves and towns to close, when it does not support the manufacturing and forestry industries but uses $10 billion to pay down the debt, then it is not doing its duty. This government is not doing its duty. People in our towns and cities needed support, but the Conservative government abandoned them.