I do my best to avoid watching Question Period (QP) because, well, it makes me so damned sad; yet yesterday's answers from the Conservative benches were particularly disappointing. Anyone who has seen the numbers knows that the Tories have been anything but "fiscally-conservative" since coming to power - having increased spending by 42% - but there have been limited glimmers of hope in the government benches.

Among those few bright lights was John Baird, a veteran of the taxpayer-friendly Harris government in Ontario. In response to a "question" from NDP Leader Jack Layton as to why the Conservatives seemingly hate seniors and the middle class, Mr. Baird turned his guns on the Liberals for cutting spending in the 1990s.

"The last time Canada faced hard economic times, the previous government cut spending by literally $25 billion to Canada's important social programs."

That thud you hear is my jaw bouncing off of the desk. With an established record as a small-government advocate and the accomplishment of shepherding the Federal Accountability Act through the House, attacking the Liberals for their forgotten era of relative fiscal restraint was disheartening.

Full disclosure: John Baird is my MP and someone that I consider to be a friend; but despite the baseless nature of Mr. Layton's question (including a dead-wrong assertion that inflation is high), it matters not which party is in power when sound public policy initiatives are carried out. That it happened to be the Liberals (with significant pressure from the Reform Party) that cut spending to balance the budget does not alter the fact that it was the right thing to do.  Health-care, welfare, most social policy for that matter, are the constitutional responsibility of the provinces.

With so few allies inside of the House of Commons in 2010, taxpayers should hope that this statement by Mr. Baird was inspired by heated debate and not by a belief that cutting federal spending on provincial programs is inherently wrong.