Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm curious as to the multiple screens in the offices of our Liberal colleagues if it's the Leafs game or the Prime Minister's speech at the convention that's on the other screen.... Anyway, I'll keep going on this screen.
I was addressing MP Blaikie's question about the financial record of the Mulroney government, which, as I said, was an financial disaster inherited from Pierre Trudeau: a $468-billion national debt, an 8.9%-of-GDP annual deficit and a massive growth in the size of government, not unlike what we've now seen with 80,000 more civil servants being hired.
As I said the other day—being from a fishing riding, it's an example that's close to my heart—there is the growth in the last three years of the fisheries department by 5,000 people. That may not seem like a lot, but the department had only 10,000 to start with and now has15,000. The HR department has doubled and now has 832 people. That's a lot of HR people. I'm being asked about how the service is, and those jobs, lest you think they actually went out to enforcement, which has been like “finding Freeland”—invisible in Atlantic Canada—have gone mostly to head office. They've hired over 1,000 people in corporate strategy and finance, because, of course, finance there apparently has much more money to spend in producing fewer results.
That aside, by the second year of the Mulroney government, his incredible finance minister, one of the nicest and most honourable people you could ever meet, who was also a groundbreaker in Canada in advocating on mental health, the Honourable Michael Wilson, in two short years turned a structural deficit into an operating surplus.
I know that people sometimes get confused about that now, because they'll say, “But he ran a deficit.” Yes, he did, because 38¢ of every dollar was going to pay interest on Pierre Trudeau's debt. The operating surplus was going to try to deal with that issue and, of course, that was made more difficult with the recession that happened in 1991. An important part of that time—I referenced it earlier—has to do with the amendment of MP Blaikie on this issue of ministerial accountability that I've been speaking of for the last little while.
I've got to tell you that one of the people with the most integrity that I've ever seen in the Liberal Party of Canada—and that's not a big search that you can do—was the Right Honourable John Turner. I met John Turner.
Let me tell you about the Right Honourable John Turner. As finance minister, he resigned from Pierre Trudeau's cabinet over the spending and other issues. More importantly, he briefly was Prime Minister of Canada. I think he was the shortest-serving one; I know that some people think it's the Right Honourable Kim Campbell, but I think it's actually John Turner.