Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend campaigned with me, actually as a Conservative, in the winter of 2005 and in the first month of 2006. I recall at that time there was a lot of criticism within the Conservative ranks of the spending habits of the then Liberal Prime Minister and the fact that the Liberals had a budget that increased spending past the point of $200 billion.
How does she feel now that her own Minister of Finance has increased spending by a substantial amount and now has the greatest amount of money being spent in any budget ever in history under the watch of a Conservative finance minister: $236 billion? Never before have we seen that kind of spending.
We have had increases now in this budget which will double the rate of inflation in this year. Program spending alone, without even debt interest payment, will be in excess of $200 billion in the fiscal year 2008-09. How does the parliamentary secretary justify that? How does that jive with the fact we were all slagging the former Prime Minister for spending far less money? How can she justify this particular expenditure and call it conservative?