Mr. Speaker, my colleague is the exact vintage as me, I am pretty certain, so we have very similar memories of our journeys in Saskatchewan.
I remember in the early 1980s when my dad was buying farmland and interest rates were 17% or 18% in a lot of cases. Just to put that in a really simple perspective, which is how I explain it to constituents, if we end up with a 1%, 2% or 3% increase in interest rates, the impact of that on the ability of government to support many of the programs it currently does would be significantly affected. For example, a 2% increase in interest rates is what is spent on national defence in a year. A 3% increase in interest rates is the amount of health transfers to the provinces every year. When we put it in terms like that and with interest rates rising 1%, 2% or 3% not being unrealistic, it would have a huge impact on our ability to support very important programs in our country.