Mr. Speaker, the fiscal reality is the international money markets have already factored in the government's deficit target, the Canadian dollar is weak, interest rates are rising and unemployment is still at the 10 per cent level.
Unless the government adopts a more courageous stance on deficit reduction during the present recovery it will make exactly the same mistake the Mulroney government made in 1984-85.
I ask the Prime Minister why does he not expend some of his present political capital on eliminating the deficit rather than allowing ministers to fritter it away on half baked measures?