Madam Speaker, actually I appreciate the opportunity to engage my colleague from Wild Rose on this issue because there is a lot of rhetoric around. Let me try to present the facts in as straightforward a manner as I can.
When this government was elected in 1984 it faced a very serious problem of high deficits and debt. In fact, the deficit relative to GDP, the size of the economy, was about 8%. We then engaged in the process of reducing spending because average Liberal government program spending, which the member from Edmonton will know, in the last 10 years before the election of the Progressive Conservative government in 1984 increased 14% a year. Guess who was minister of finance?
We engaged in the process of turning the ship around. I am sure the member for Wild Rose will appreciate that does not happen overnight. Let me set down for him some markers that indicated real progress. The federal government started to balance its operating budget as of 1987.
What is the operating budget? I will take a second. It is the amount that comes in in revenue and what we spend on programs and excludes interest on the debt. From there on what we dealt with was the leftover debt, mostly of Liberal governments.