Thanks, Mr. Chair.
It was interesting to hear a member of the Trudeau Liberal government raise the idea of balanced budgets after, as was pointed out by colleague Mr. Lake, they broke their promise, of course, to have the budget balanced after running deficits and after, of course, being handed a balanced budget when they took office just a few years ago.
Why is it that they have run such large deficits? Well, Mr. Cross, you've provided us with the answer. You wrote an article following the last budget, this year's budget, for the Financial Post that was entitled “Another sprawling, unfocused budget, and so little to show for all the red ink". I will quote very briefly from it. You said that “during Trudeau's tenure, government spending has increased 20 per cent, from $296.6 billion to $355.6 billion”.
There's our answer as to why we have such large deficits and mounting debt in this country.
I want to ask you a couple of questions. The first one relates to this. First, for the benefit of others in the room for context, I'll provide another very brief excerpt from that article. You indicated:
The end result is an economy that looks largely as it was four years ago, except with higher government spending, persistent budget deficits and more stringent housing regulations. Economic growth is sputtering, oil prices are low, no pipelines have been built to access markets outside the U.S., manufacturing remains moribund, business investment has faltered, export competitiveness has eroded, and the federal and most provincial governments remain at each other’s throats. This stasis is hardly the “Real Change” promised by the Liberal 2015 election slogan.
Maybe you could walk us through what the effects are of higher government spending through these budget deficits and the mounting debt and what consequences that will have both short term and long term for our economic health and potential for growth in this country.