Right. I have a two-part follow-up to that.
First, you mentioned the 2008-09 recession and the fact that there was a need at the time to stimulate the economy, and that obviously meant deficits for that period of time. Of course, then, the government made the effort that was required to come out of that, but prior to that as well, the government that was in power, the government that I was later a part of, was running surpluses and paying down debt in that period of time. Is that something you advocate? During a good period of time, should we be trying to pay down the debt? That's the first part.
The second part when we're looking at the situation is that you've mentioned good times and running a deficit, and of course many people have talked about what that means if and when we do experience another downturn or a recession. For instance, the recent paper that the Fraser Institute put out indicated that if we were to see a slowdown like the 2000-01 variety, we would run deficits of about $50 billion if the circumstances were the same. Of course, if it's like the 2008-09 recession, that would be even more serious in terms of the numbers for the deficit. Obviously, we're seeing the path that the government is on now, with people are saying that they wouldn't be able to balance the budget until 2045. What I'm asking there is whether that is something that we should really be concerned about as well, and why?
There are two parts there.