Mr. Speaker, I was astounded to hear the hon. member's speech. I thought I was listening to something in 1790. This is 1994, I should remind the hon. member. We are in the 1990s. It has been 200 years since the people he quoted wrote what they wrote. I think he quoted Locke and Paine. Old Tom Paine has been dead about 200 years as I recall, the hon. member can correct me. What he wrote was relevant in his day, but surely to goodness this is grossly antiquated at this point in time. Things have changed.
When I was a student of politics I remember reading Tom Paine and some of Locke's stuff. It was regarded as dated then and that was 25 or 30 years ago. I think the hon. member really ought to update his authorities and come up with something of the late 20th century in which we now live. To go back and quote these people as a basis for saying that we are now half slaves is frankly unbelievable and unacceptable.
I noted the hon. member in his speech did not mention a thing about the benefits we get with the taxes we pay. This is something that members of the Reform Party seem to forget with monotonous regularity. They harp about government programs that are wasteful. He referred to grants to artists and to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women as examples of grants he thought were wastes of money. However he never told us where the cuts were going to come. If we cut those grants, whether it be the grants to artists or grants to the national action committee, we would not save very much money and he knows that.
What he really is talking about is cutting off the poorest of the poor at the bottom of our social ladder and telling them: "You people will have to make do on your own. We are going back to 17th century living where the poor get their money from a church or some other charitable organization and nothing whatever from the government".