Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the member's thoughtful question. We would have done just what our plan suggested. I do not know if the hon. member remembers, but in 1993 our election platform included a plan to get rid of the deficit in three years. Zero in three was the plan. That is what the government happened to do.
Our projections were more accurate than those of the finance minister. At the time the government said it could not be done. It said it was bad, anti-Canadian and so on. Our plan was methodical. We would have continued to meet the needs of Canadians in social areas just as the Liberals did when they adopted our plan and implemented it in three years.
The election was in the fall of 1993. That parliament started in the fall of 1994 and lasted three years until 1997. During that time the government did exactly what we would have done and what the hon. member has now suggested.
However we would have done it differently from 1997 until now. That is what I was talking about. A great deal of surplus money was available. All the government did was take money out of EI and pay it against the debt. It managed to spend all the rest.
That is like a family with bills that exceed its income. The budget was finally balanced and the government was earning more than it needed for all the necessities of life.
What did it do? Did it pay down its mortgage as rapidly as it could so it could manage it better when things turned tough? No, it did not. It found new ways to spend it. The kid wants a TV in his room. Another kid wants new hubcaps for his car. The government wasted the money on a bunch of frivolous things Canadians do not generally support. As a result the money used to pay down the debt was about half what the government could have used.
We could have been back down to at least the debt level of 1993. We would not still have to pay, as we are paying this very day, some $40 billion a year on interest. That is a huge drain on government coffers. It prevents us from doing what we should be doing in terms of helping to fund education and health care. It prevents us from looking after the defence of our country, which is such an urgent matter these days.