Mr. Speaker, the member is a westerner in a social gospel kind of movement. He and his father are among those rare NDPers that sometimes Conservatives can agree with. I obviously like the first part of the motion and the member knows this.
The second part of the motion I have a problem with. We are running a $26.6-billion deficit. I am going to refer to some words from Roy Romanow and Tommy Douglas, who said that when governments are in debt, they are actually not making policy decisions any more on behalf of their people. They are making policy decisions on behalf of the people they owe the money to.
What I see by running up large successive deficits and accumulating more debt, which the first part of the motion could easily deal with, is a policy of letting bankers decide for us what we should be doing.
Is that a wise way of doing it? I am guessing Roy Romanow would not agree with it. We should be paying down the debt and reducing the deficits, so that those on tougher means with lower incomes do not have to continue paying taxes to finance our out-of-control spending.