Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the parliamentary secretary thinks he lives.
If anybody could have eliminated the deficit, maybe Brian Mulroney and all of his ministers who caused the deficit to rise to $43 billion would have given them a hint. I am sorry but apparently he has been giving them advice, so they have taken a surplus and they are back down to a $55 billion deficit.
What did we do with that money, he asks? I just want to point out two programs for him. One was an increase in equalization payments to all provinces. It was $32 billion over a 10 year period, $3.2 billion per annum. That is still ongoing. It is in year five.
There was also an additional $41 billion transfer in health transfers to the provinces, which is $4.1 billion per annum every year. We are now in year five and we have another five years of this to go. That was all money that was put into the fiscal plan in 2005 and it was effected. It was put in place. Everybody here knew about it and everybody voted for it. That is $72 billion.
As for reducing the tax burden, he knows quite well that the former Liberal administration not only reduced the deficit to zero but also the debt by over $100 billion. His government brought it back up again.