Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the member for Medicine Hat.
On government by polls, I do not pay a lot of attention to polls. My party and I determine economic policy which will best lead Canadians into the 21st century. His party had polled that my riding would go Reform last election. I would not be here if those polls had been correct. Therefore I tend to focus on sound economic policy.
When I refer to the Conservative government as having been extraordinarily important in laying the structural changes necessary to eliminate the deficit, those were not completely my own words. Those came from the Economist in its preview of the world 1998, which said specifically that much of the credit for deficit reduction in Canada belongs to the Conservative government of the early 1990s which introduced free trade, GST and deregulation of the financial services industry, transportation and the petroleum industry. I suggest that perhaps there are more people than simply I who credit the Conservative Party for what it achieved in the early 1990s.
When talking about trusting politicians and doing one thing and saying another, I think Brian Mulroney was, for instance, portrayed by the leader of the Reform Party as being a fake. Brian Mulroney did not dye his hair. Brian Mulroney did not have his teeth done. Brian Mulroney did not have his eyes operated on, and yet they refer to Brian Mulroney as a fake. Let us give credit where credit is due.