Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate. I want to commend my colleague from Welland for articulating very carefully what happens to people when they are unemployed. It is important to do that because we can get caught up in the loftiness of national programs and billions of dollars this and billions of dollars that. At the end of the day, however, everything we do is about, or is supposed to be about, people in their homes, raising their families, hopefully going to work and going about trying to enjoy as much as they can the quality of life this great country can offer.
I want to address this very quickly because I suspect one of the backbenchers will want to jump up for their moment of fame and ask me to address why it is that I can come in here and, before even seeing the budget, say that I will be voting against it.
I have a great answer for that one. I spent eight years in the Ontario legislature watching the Mike Harris government dismantle all the things that were great about the province of Ontario. After one budget from Mike Harris, I did not need to read any other budgets. I did but I did not need to because I knew the destructive path that premier and that government were on and I knew the damage they would do. A lot of what is happening in Ontario is the result of those chickens coming home to roost.
Not only is it a government with the same direction, but the chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada just happens to be the same chief of staff that Mike Harris had.
I look at the front bench, I listen to QP, I listen to ministers talk and what do I hear? I hear a finance minister going on and on about tax cuts and corporations, and this, that and other thing. He is the same finance minister we had in Ontario. I know the damage that finance minister did.
There are other cronies from that era. Make no mistake, many of us in this House knew exactly what that budget would do, whether or not we had the details. We knew that even if there were something in there that was halfway good, we could not count on the government to implement it. We could not count on the government to keep its word. It passes laws and goes against them. It makes promises and goes against them.
Why, for one minute, would we believe that the government would suddenly be different? All the government had to do was get past the vote, remember, and the Liberals made sure it did. Now, whether it is implemented in a way that is acceptable or not, time will tell. I have no doubt in my mind how all of this will ultimately play out.
I want to raise a couple of issues—