Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that throughout Canada, on my visits following the budget, people welcomed me enthusiastically and expressed their pride at finally having a balanced budget.
For 25 years—it indeed started in the early 1970s and continued until last year—we increased the debt burden. It was a major problem, and we were limited in the choices the government could make because of the deficit and the debt.
Now that we have a balanced budget—the first of the G7 countries—we have choices. We can regain control over our finances and decide ourselves on the vision we will follow in the coming years.
The new economy will not be built by bricks and mortar. The new economy requires knowledge, learning and connections of all Canadians to the new technologies that will exist.
The budget has the vision to do that, but it is based on the sanity of finances that has been recovered as a result of the efforts of the Minister of Finance.