What great questions by my colleague, Mr. Speaker.
As I said earlier in response to another member, far from this unproductive bickering being over, I would guess that it is at its highest level since the 1930s.
With respect to my colleague's first question, never in the history of Canada has a new government inherited such a huge surplus. Never in the history of Canada has a new government squandered such a surplus with such speed so as to bring this country to the edge of deficit.
We cleaned up the $42 billion Conservative deficit which Liberals inherited in 1993 and put that into surplus. We left the Conservatives a huge surplus. They squandered it in two short years.
But this is not terribly surprising. Let us ask ourselves this question. Before the current Prime Minister inherited these huge Liberal surpluses, when was the last time any Conservative prime minister of Canada actually balanced the books, even in one single year? I will give members a hint. It was not Brian Mulroney. It was not Kim Campbell. It was not John Diefenbaker. It was not even R.B. Bennett. No. We have to go back to 1912, the year the Titanic sank, when Sir Robert Borden was prime minister. That was the last time the Conservatives actually balanced the books.