Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I would remind him that in 1993, if I understood the way he couched his remarks, the government inherited a situation which is extraordinary when we think of it now.
We were taking in about $120 billion and spending $162 billion every year. Every year a shortfall of $42 billion was stacked on to the debt, as the hon. member stated. That is almost a billion dollars a week. However the momentum of that enormous debt is something the hon. member mentioned but did not give sufficient emphasis to.
With regard to paying down the debt, the member used the pleasant folksy analogy of driving his car. I have great sympathy with him, particularly because when the price of gas was high I did exactly that. I once ran out of gas 200 metres from a gas station because I hoped it would be cheaper somewhere else.
I will give another analogy of a family which finds itself in a home with an enormous mortgage. It may be no fault of its own but for whatever reason the family has an enormous mortgage and must decide what to do.
We would all love to finally pay off our mortgages. I would love to. Perhaps the member has already done it. The family in this home discovers it must fix the roof. The parents must feed themselves and their children. Their kids must go to school. They need transportation. They need to do a great variety of things in addition to paying down the mortgage.
The hon. member says we should have paid down the debt. What would the member have done? Would he have starved the children, let the roof leak or given up personal transportation? What would the hon. member have done to pay down the debt?