Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague from Winnipeg North speak, but not as much as I enjoy hearing two cats fighting at midnight outside of my window. It is almost as much, though.
The point that I wish to make is that people should be judged by what they do, not by what they say. I remember, back in about 2003, I took the leader of our party, Jack Layton, to a series of northern Ontario and Manitoba fly-in communities to look at the cost of food. That was at the height of the Liberal majority government, after it had imposed a 2% cap on all spending for first nations and aboriginal people. Even though their growth was 6% per year in those communities, the Liberals decided in their wisdom that they only needed a 2% cap, which I would argue has created the social crisis that we are experiencing today.
This was in the early days of BlackBerrys, but Jack had one with him and I remember him taking photographs of the appalling, ridiculous, unaffordable prices of food in Pauingassi, Poplar River, Little Grand Rapids, Pikangikum and these places where people were starving. They were starving under the days of the Liberal regime.
When we listen to the Liberal member try to say “back when we were in charge, everything was rosy”, we know that it was rotten then. They starved. For that prime minister to say he is now in conversion on the road to Damascus is like St. Paul, talking about aboriginal issues. They had nine balanced budgets, nine surplus budgets in a row, and there was not a nickel for first nations spending until he was finished.