Mr. Speaker, I come from the school of thought that, in Canadian elections, in order for voters to cast a responsible ballot, they should be able to count on the promises that the political parties are making to them at that time, so they can have confidence that what they vote for is what they are going to get.
We are talking about the budget today, and we know that the Liberals told Canadians in their campaign that, if they were elected, they would run budget deficits of $10 billion in three successive years and balance the budget in the fourth year. They told Canadians that the important measure was the percentage of the deficit compared to the GDP, and yet a budget was tabled that includes $120 billion of deficits over the next six years, no plan to balance the budget over four years, and forget about the metric of GDP to deficit.
We have a government that told Canadians it would put $3 billion into home care, and there is not a penny for that in the budget. It told Canadians it would restore home mail delivery and that there would be a national framework for child care within the first 100 days in office. I could go on and on.
I want to ask my hon. colleague this. Does she think that this budget reflects the promises that were made to Canadians, and has there been any cost to Canada's democratic process as a result of the government breaking so many promises within its first seven months of government?