Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. He is pointing out what I think many Canadians are beginning to realize. When it comes to economic policy, the Conservative government and its finance minister are like the little old man in The Wizard of Oz. They throw around a lot of fear about coalitions, prisons and Russians flying by. Yet when we get behind the curtain, we see this ideological bitter little man with no vision. What we also see, when we start to look at the numbers, is how wasteful the Conservative government is and how much money it is blowing.
For example, the present industry minister racked up a lot of the $1 billion. He put in a fake lake in Toronto and drained a real lake in Muskoka. He shut down real lighthouses in the Maritimes and put a lighthouse in land-locked Muskoka. He even put heated sheets in the arena for his constituents.
The government uses federal dollars to heat the derrieres of Conservative voters, yet it tells our senior citizens in northern Ontario that the cupboard is bare, but this is not fiscal prudence.
What does the hon. member think about the derrieres of Muskoka Conservatives being warmed, while my senior citizens are living in the cold this winter because they are paying the HST?