Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Chicoutimi put it, it is most regrettable. The Minister of Finance says that, when the Liberals came to office, a little over three years ago, the federal deficit was $42 billion and that he lowered it to slightly less than $40 billion-$39.7 billion, I think-at the end of the first year of his mandate. The objective for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1996 was $32.7 billion.
With a supreme effort, the Minister of Finance brought it down to $28.4 billion. What we must remember is that with the $5 billion annual surplus in the unemployment insurance fund, the Government of Canada's real deficit is not $28 billion, but $33 billion. Last year, it was not $39 billion, but rather $43 billion or $44 billion.
Without the surplus from the unemployment insurance fund, which the minister appropriates to artificially reduce his deficit, the federal deficit has hardly moved since the Liberals took office. I also agree with my colleague from Chicoutimi that our unemployment rate is artificially too high and the money that should go to job creation is artificially and improperly being used to reduce the deficit, which is in fact much higher.