The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking shortly about the budget, so I will limit myself to one question for the right hon. member. I do not understand for the life of me how he can boast about his own government's record when it was the Conservatives who left this government in 1993 wi

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, the point I was making was that their achievement was to turn a $38 billion deficit into a $42 billion deficit some nine years later, whereas we turned a $42 billion deficit into a sizable surplus. I guess it has to do in part with the size of the objectives and goal

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, just one last word to the leader of the Tory Party on his comments. His first line of defence for his $42 billion deficit was that he inherited a $38 billion deficit from the Liberals in 1984. What an achievement. He turned a $38 billion deficit into a $42 billion de

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear the suggestion from our hon. colleague from the Canadian Alliance that the Liberal government has been biased all these years in the direction of favouring growth in Alberta rather than in other parts of the country. I take that as a compliment

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, let us suppose that, tomorrow, the federal government were to convert all cash transfers to Quebec into tax points—it will not do so, but let us suppose for a moment that it did—what would happen? The Quebec government would say that today the federal contribution t

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, I was not going to rise until the hon. member kept giving us these factual errors. I think the best place to look is page 114 of the budget document, which shows a chart of the federal transfer payments to the provinces. It is today at an all time high. The error th

Question No. 83  As required by Bill C-8, the four recently demutualized insurers have a common transition period during which they must remain widely held. No mergers by, or acquisitions of, demutualized firms are permitted during that period. The transition period ends on December 31, 2001. Af

The Budget  Thirty-eight.

The Budget  Madam Speaker, the hon. member talks with pride about the big steps taken by the previous Tory government. His own leader mentioned the big step yesterday when he boasted that he inherited a $36 billion deficit in 1984 and by--

The Budget  By 1993 he had left a $42 billion deficit to the Liberal government. That is his idea of a big step, from $38 billion to $42 billion. Some big step. Our big step under our finance minister and our Prime Minister was to take that $42 billion deficit, reduce it to zero and turn it

The Budget  That is absolutely true. That is the largest tax cut of any of the G-7 countries. The contention is made that there is no real tax relief. Take the increase in CPP premiums. We do not agree that is a tax increase. Even if that were subtracted from the $17 billion, it would still

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, with all due respect I believe the member is utterly confused with respect to taxation. The comment that there is no real tax relief is ridiculous, when in fact a year ago we had a $100 billion tax cut over five years. If it is limited to this year alone, it is a $1

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to compliment the hon. member opposite as being by far the most effective spokesperson for his party on economic affairs, which is not saying all that much, but it does make one wonder why he is sitting at the back rather than the front. In my ve

Committees of the House  Madam Speaker, the hon. member ought to know that the surplus forecasts do not come from the government but from economists, banks and other institutions. It is therefore difficult to understand why we should believe the Bloc's prediction of a $13 billion surplus. These predictio

Committees of the House  These predictions are totally lacking in credibility. All of the economists are saying one thing, but the Bloc Quebecois is producing forecasts from another planet, predicting an enormous surplus. There is just one situation in which they could be believed, and that is the one i