Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his comments. First, with the Conservatives, who pride themselves in being somewhat disciplined about the messaging, almost robot-like at times, there has been nothing but confusion not only with respect to this budget that is meant to come at some point in the spring—maybe toward the summer; we are not sure—but there has been utter chaos. One minister gets up saying they are going to bring in a budget that will likely bring in more cuts to services that Canadians need, like food inspection, rail inspection, and veterans affairs. We have seen that already. They are going to cut again. Then we have another minister saying no, not at all. We have another minister saying we have to spend our rainy day fund to make up for the wasteful promises they made. Then the next minister says no, not at all.
With respect to timing, we have seen the government download more than $36 billion in health care cuts to the provinces. It has just recently announced that disaster programs are going to be cut by hundreds of millions of dollars more to the provinces. Now Conservatives are saying, for their own political fortunes and their own political timing, that the provinces are just going to have to wait and guess what contributions may be coming from the federal government. These are provinces that are struggling to make ends meet, much like Canadian families.
The responsible thing, the right thing to do is react, act, and take some leadership when it comes to responding to our economy right now.