Thank you very much.
I don't like to use committee time to debate other members of the committee, but Mr. Fragiskatos made a number of comments in his intervention that were quite patently false and demand correction.
Members of the opposition—certainly not Conservative members of the opposition—at no point opposed the emergency aid measures during this crisis. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It was, in fact, the Conservative opposition that quite quickly understood the insufficiency of some of the support measures, including the wage subsidy as it was initially rolled out, and we spent the early months of the pandemic working constructively to solve many of the problems in delivering these aid measures. Austerity, whether stated or unstated, was therefore never part of the Conservative response to the crisis.
What the Conservative opposition opposes is further spending of, say, up to $100 billion in further undefined stimulus, especially at a time when the savings rates of Canadians and many businesses, although not all, are extremely high. We expect that there will be economic recovery if we can ever get our people vaccinated.
That needed to be said in response to the incorrect characterization made by Mr. Fragiskatos.
I'm going to continue with—