The member from British Columbia laughs but the NDP governments, the CCF governments, going back to 1944 in Saskatchewan, have always balanced their budgets. The member knows that.
It is his friends in the Conservative Party, the Grant Devine government, who ran up in nine short years the largest per capita debt in the country, even higher than Newfoundland. It is his friends. They were the reformers of the day who ran up the debts. It was the Brian Mulroney Conservatives who ran up the debts, the friends of the Reform Party, the fiscal conservatives.
If we want to learn something about being responsible financially, look at the history of the CCF-NDP in Saskatchewan. It was always balancing budgets and at the same time had the most progressive social and economic legislation anywhere in North America.