I think the hon. Leader of the Opposition would be pleased to hear more. We saw it. We avoided it. We were able, ahead of the schedule set for us by the Reform Party, to get our deficit under control.
I will take some credit on behalf of all government members in this House, but the Canadians who sacrificed to make this possible are the ones who deserve the credit as well. We avoided that iceberg and we have done it in such a way that we were able to almost inoculate ourselves perfectly against the Asian flu.
The hon. member talked about how the international markets have reacted to Canada. They have reacted better to the Canadian dollar than to any other currency except the U.S. dollar, which has always been a safe haven in difficult times. Ours has fallen less than any other currency against the American dollar. This is a sign of international confidence in Canada, but he talks about the debt we are committed to continuing to get it down.
The hon. member talks about tax levels. Yes, we are committed to reducing taxes and we have already shown tangible examples of where we have reduced taxes.
Canada today lies in the middle of the G-7 countries in terms of the total tax burden borne by Canadians. Higher than Canada are France, Germany and Italy, and lower than Canada are Japan, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. We have made one of the three prongs of our economic future that we will continue to reduce taxes. But we are not going to reduce taxes at the expense of people who are disadvantaged in our society, people who need health care, people who need learning, people who need education, families living in poverty, the disabled, people from the regions who deserve help. We are not going to do it at the expense of being able to reduce, on a reasonable basis, our debt burden. We are committed to that. We are doing it in a balanced fashion. That is the difference between us and the Reform Party. We are going to continue the paths which have proved so beneficial to Canadians over the past four years.