Foreign Aid

March 12, 2010

Mr. Richard Harris: $2.5 billion, sorry? It was $5 billion a year. In the ensuing Liberal 13 year administration, they slashed it by 50% down to $2.5 billion a year.
   
The hon. member might not want to admit it, but this year our foreign aid is back up to $5 billion a year, and we have untied it to make it more effective than it has ever been in the history of this Parliament.
   
I also find it very unsettling that the hon. member could talk about the Conservatives trying to make cuts. We are not making any cuts, and we are certainly not making them on the backs of the poor and those who can least afford it, unlike the former Chrétien Liberals. When they came to power to balance the budget under former minister Paul Martin, to balance their books they slashed $25 billion from health care and social transfers to the provinces. That was done on the backs of the poor and the infirm. Does that sound familiar? He remembers that. I remember that. We cannot and will not take any lessons from that member, who was a part of and voted for every one of those nasty cuts that the former Liberal government introduced to balance their books on the backs of the poor and the infirm.
   
I would be embarrassed if I were the hon. member, standing up making the comments he did, given the record he has to stand up for, the record of slash and cut to the poor and the infirm, those who needed health care and those who needed social transfer help. We can take no lessons from them and that is for sure.
   
Mr. Richard Harris (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we have to give the member, as a Liberal, credit for having the guts to talk about advertising. That could lead us right into the sponsorship program, which I am sure he does not want to talk about, considering he was a member of that government.
   
The hon. member is very selective, but he selects the wrong thing. He forgets that under the former Progressive Conservative government in 1993, just before the Liberals came to power, foreign aid was about $5 billion a year.