Mr. Speaker, the member's question is a good one. It is twofold. First, he correctly observed that many of the promises in this budget are back-loaded. They are loaded down the road. We will see very little benefit in the very short to medium term, but we will see this investment in the long term.
I was speaking to our member who is our defence critic, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, and he said that for some of the defence spending, although the Liberals announced a big amount, when we look at the small print, it will be over 30 years. I have been here when we have done budgets, and if we did something over five years, members would say, “That is not for this year, that is over five years”.
The Liberals have said two things. First, for much of their budget today, we would see benefits just before the next federal election. It was announced today, and it will be re-announced maybe in 2018 and again in 2019, just before the federal election. Again, the Liberals back-load these things. They make promises so far down the road that we may not be here 30 years down the road. That is the Liberal plan.
On the program my friend from the New Democratic Party talked about, the eco-energy retrofit program, it was a program to encourage Canadians to have upgrades in their homes or other places, and the government would help with some of those costs. I had, and I am sure other members had too, constituents, seniors, who said that maybe they could get a new furnace or better windows and really save some money and save some energy. In my riding, they were more concerned about saving money in their pocketbooks than about the energy thing, but we all want to save where we can. When we start hitting people in the pocketbook, that is when they really are incentivized to do something.
Again, we see nothing, really, in this budget. In fact, I heard one Liberal member say that the last budget was the economy budget and this one is not. I think we would all agree that there is very little here for anyone in this budget.