Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer both the observation of the member and his question.
As to his observation, I have no doubt that if the fundamentals were not right he would be very critical of the government. When the fundamentals are right because of positive government action I will say so. Our government has done a good job. It has made good progress in making the fundamentals right.
As to adding to the debt, I am glad the member admitted in his presentation that his party would have added $61 billion to the debt.
I will go back to my career in the financial services industry before I took this job to give an analogy of what we are talking about. Most of us have found ourselves in a position where we may have overspent. We may have bought a house that was a little too big or had a mortgage that was a little higher than it should be. Perhaps we bought a vehicle on the spur of the moment because of its accessories, making the debt for our car a little higher. Perhaps we ran the plastic up on the last trip or whatever and we find ourselves owing more than we should.
As somebody who dealt with consumer loans I often had individuals come to me who had found themselves in that situation. Our country is essentially in the situation today where we find that we have overspent and we have a large debt. If we took the philosophy of the third party in our dealings with such individuals, we could simply say that is too bad, that they have to pay back all the debt in one year and the fact they will not have enough money to feed their families or clothe their children is irrelevant.
Or, we could do what is generally done in the industry. We could arrange a debt consolidation loan where the need to eliminate that debt is recognized and the fact that while it is being eliminated food for the family and clothes for the children have to be provided. Therefore we would arrange for the payments to be over a reasonable period of time.
In my speech I pointed out that we take a balanced approach as a government. However, here we have a party fixated on one aspect of our responsibility. It does not recognize the social responsibility which the government has to Canadians.