Sure you can talk about the free trade that you brought in. You can talk about the GST, which was brought in by the Mulroney government.
However, each and every year, the Conservatives ran a deficit and a deficit is an overdraft. If they want to talk about sound, long term economic policy, they do not run an overdraft every year and then at the end of the year pile it on top of the mortgage and then run another one and do that every year for nine years. In the last year when the Canadian people finally had had enough, the overdraft was $42 billion. Each year that you pile that overdraft on to the mortgage of this country, you wind up increasing the debt. Figure it out.
For nine years, we had overdraft financing by the Conservative government and the Conservatives are now trying to lecture this government. I would ask the members to look at a graph. If they looked at a graph of the nine years of Mulroney government, and the member for Sherbrooke was in that government I might add, the graph on the overdraft would go straight up I say to the former mayor of Halifax. It would go straight up and out of sight.
Since 1993, what has happened under the leadership of the present Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance is the graph has been turned on its ear. The graph has gone straight down to the point where finally we are not continuing to run overdrafts.
Now that, I would submit to the members opposite, is what one would call, to use their terminology, sound, long term economic policy.
With regard this motion, it is also rather incredulous. It reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should lower the tax burden on Canadians and offer interest relief to student loan holders—.
The example they continue to use, as does the Reform Party, is the provincial Tories in the province of Ontario. They talk about how the economy has grown and jobs have grown. I would admit they have. In fact, revenue has increased in the province. There is no doubt about that. Why? Imagine that just by chance the policies of the federal government in ensuring that inflation is eliminated, ensuring that interest rates are at 20 year lows and ensuring that we have restored the funding in the transfer payments to the provinces might have something to do with the economic turnaround in the province of Ontario. I am sure members could.