Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the member for Québec East is questioning my memory, because my memory of the period when the GST decision was taken is very clear, exceptionally so. If I am not mistaken, there was a minister at the cabinet table, his name will come to me—what was it? It began with a B—ah, yes, Bouchard, it was Bouchard.
One of the ministers at the cabinet table when the decision to introduce the GST was taken was the former leader and founder of his party, now Premier of Quebec. I assume the member for Québec East is not in disagreement with his leader. Surely not; that would be too glaring a contradiction.
Mr. Bouchard fought for these very policies, and finally won over his colleagues at the cabinet table.
Since the member for Québec East was wondering about my memory, I will go back over the whole story. What actually happened, objectively speaking, to the government in 1984? What was the situation awaiting us in 1984 when we came to power? We were looking at a situation where Canada's public debt, under the former Liberal government, had increased 1,000 percent. The member for Ottawa Centre likes to talk about 1993, but he forgets about the years before that. The public debt had increased by 1,000 percent under the former government. Annual spending was increasing by an average of 14 percent annually.
We brought that down to within 3 or 4 percent of the rate of economic growth. We managed to hold the line on spending and, in 1987, the former government managed to create a surplus in the government's operating budget. That is the real story behind all the rhetoric. Then we managed to lower the annual deficit from 8.4 or 8.6 percent of the GDP in 1984 to almost half of that. That is the real story.
For those who are interested, the real story is that all the measures to reduce spending put forward by the former government were shot down by the Liberals now in power. The Minister of Finance who took the Conservative government to task for its restrictive Bank of Canada policy is now piling on even more restrictions. It is these same people, including members of the Bloc Quebecois, who criticized the government's spending.