It was New Brunswick. I thought it was. Premier Lord closed the toll road. The problem is that it is fine to do that, because I am not particularly a fan of toll roads, but what was it replaced with? It drove up the debt.
The federal party has decided to endorse that. I guess that is not a great shock when we consider the fact that the Conservatives left a $42 billion deficit when they were in government. They shout over there because they hate for us to remind them of that, but it is the truth and it needs to be told. It needs to be spoken about because the obvious solution to their spending plans is to somehow take us back into the era of deficit financing.
I am really surprised at that. I would have thought that the Progressive Conservative Party had learned its lesson and had realized that the running of deficits every year is like running an overdraft. I have said it many times. When they run an overdraft, how do they pay it off? They pay it off by piling it on top of the national debt. If we equate it to a family, it would run an overdraft and pay it off by putting it on top of the mortgage on the family home. We all know we can only do that for so long. At some point in time something has got to give.
We do not have the answers. It is so easy to stand and pontificate, as the Conservatives have done in their motion, that we need to address the serious transportation problems facing the Canadian people. They do not have any specifics. They do not have any answers. They do not have any solutions they are prepared to put forward. They simply want to say that someone has to fix this problem.
Let us address the problem. I have already spoken about what would appear not to be a problem. Look at the shipping which comes into Halifax harbour. Are they going to tell us that there is not an infrastructure in the harbour in Halifax to accommodate international ocean-going vessels that come there on a regular basis? Are they going to tell us that the airport in Halifax is not capable of handling the traffic that comes into that province? Are they going to sit there and tell us that their province is full of congested roads with potholes when we know that it is not true?
I would suggest that the crisis they are talking about is a fabrication in their own minds. It is all because of one issue. It has to do with the so-called merger, although it is more of a takeover, of Canadian Airlines by Air Canada. Let us analyze that. Certainly there have been and will continue to be some route justifications in parts of the country, but the government realizes the importance of providing good quality service in the air. Look at the size of the country. We cannot expect that people are going to be able to get around without some kind of a national airline system.
The cry is that we need more competition. I hear the official opposition—I can never remember the new name, I am going to have to sit down and write it out 100 times or something, but whatever it is, the reform alliance conservative progressive whatever—