Madam Speaker, my colleague from Bruce—Grey may not like to indulge in partisan comments, but I do not have any such reticence.
I sat through the five years of the Mulroney government that the Conservative House leader referred to. I sat through five budgets where programs were cut and slashed, all in the name of reducing the deficit. However, the deficit kept going up and up. The amount of money that Canadians were paying on interest kept escalating and escalating. They talked a good game, but they really did not do a lot.
I sat through five years of unemployment that rose to over 11% and then heard the leader of the Conservative Party in the election campaign of 1993 saying that it would be well over that until after the end of the century. Now it is down to about 8%.
I saw all those years of high interest rates, high inflation and all those things that dampened business and economic recovery. I have seen a total change in those things since the Liberal government was elected.