Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I support the principle of Bill 30, Deficit Elimination Act. It's along the lines of a recommendation of the Standing Committee on Finance. I would like to applaud the Minister of Finance for putting this past his colleagues so we can debate it here in the House.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious bill, it's a very tough decision to make. I'm sure, like everybody else here, when I put my name forward to represent people in my constituency, people were concerned about balancing the budget. We had an accumulated surplus when we started and now we're into an accumulated deficit, so we're in a very tough situation.

The federal government has cut us back and division is coming in 1999. The intention here is to have a balanced budget before division occurs so we wouldn't have the problems that would be associated with trying to deal with an accumulated deficit when division does happen.

So I applaud Bill 30 and I support the principle. However, again, I would like to repeat what other Members have said, that there have to be sanctions in there that we have to make sure this bill is a serious bill so when we don't meet our targets, we have to have some sort of accountability for people. I think it's going to be a tough decision. It's going to be the people in the government, the Minister and Cabinet who are going to have to be taking the responsibility, I'm aware of that. But if there are going to be cuts; I've said in the House before, we have to work with the people in the communities to determine where we should be spending our resources. Our resources are depleting and we have an accumulated deficit. The people in the communities have become very aware of where our funding comes from and they know how the funding is spent in communities. I think we have to work together here, the government and Members on this side of the House, then we, as politicians, have to work with the people in the communities we represent so we make the right decisions. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I support the principle of this bill. Mahsi.