Mr. Speaker, I will make a couple of comments and then ask a couple of quick questions of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister.
First of all, I want to touch on his reference to New Zealand. The parliamentary secretary in referring to New Zealand said this was an example of what tough deficit reduction can do and has done. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister should know that in fact New Zealand chose not to take tough deficit reduction action, and as a result its economy collapsed. Exactly the same thing happened there as Canada is facing right now.
One day there was no one willing to buy the bonds that New Zealand floated, and Canada is very close to that. That is what Moody's and the others are warning about. The parliamentary secretary had better do a little bit of reading on what happened in New Zealand so he can speak factually about what did happen. I thought I would correct him on that.
I would like to also talk about the target of 3 per cent of GDP in three years that he refers to as the target set in the Maastricht treaty. It was a deficit target but it was based on all government debt, not just federal government debt, whereas this Liberal target is on federal government debt only. The target the Liberals have set is nothing like the target set under the Maastricht treaty.