Madam Speaker, in my speech, I tried to explain what is not so hard to understand. I think that the key to deficit reduction is economic growth. Throughout the years under the previous government, we have learned that the Conservatives always thought that, by cutting expenditures and increasing taxes they could lower the deficit. It did not work.
This year, we have a dreadful $40 billion deficit. If we want to tackle this problem, we will have to reduce government spending. That we have already acknowledged. But we must also limit tax increases. That is why the Minister of Finance stated that the deficit reduction measures announced in the budget will result in a cut of $5 in government expenditures for every one dollar raised in revenues. That is totally unlike the old tactics used by the Conservatives. We have also implemented an economic growth policy. We are prepared to invest in the new economy. We are prepared to help Canadian small businesses have access to international markets for their goods and services. That is the key to the problem.
I would just like to say a couple of words in English. If we are going to solve the problem of the deficit over the long term there is only one realistic solution and that is to achieve substantial, sustainable economic growth. That is the plan of this budget.
That is a diversion from the budgets of the previous government which relied entirely on a false hope that getting some of the macroeconomic fundamentals right was going to allow for economic growth as the grass grows in springtime. It simply did not work. We are going out into the fields, we are ploughing them, fertilizing them, we are trying to encourage economic growth. That is going to be the key to reducing the deficit in the future.