Mr. Speaker, I was interested to hear the hon. member for Malpeque complain about alleged cuts to transfer payments. If he had read the budget, he would know that transfers will not be cut back.
This is interesting. When we hearken back to the old Liberal days, and you may recall this, Mr. Speaker, the Liberals tried to balance the books on the backs of the provinces. They cut back transfers by a whopping $25 billion. These were transfers for health, social services and education to the provinces.
Today we have one of the cheerleaders of Mr. Martin's act of cutting transfers complaining about alleged cuts in transfers in our recent budget. How does the member for Malpeque justify that double standard?