Mr. Speaker, the finance minister does not understand that it is possible to control spending instead of going back to the levels of spending set by the Prime Minister when he was finance minister which drove the country into deficit.
Many senior economists have said that we are headed for a planning deficit within four years. The finance minister has not given us an adequate response. Will he guarantee to the House today that we will not end up with a planning deficit that eats into our emergency surpluses, our emergency reserves? Will he give us a commitment now that we will not go back into deficit at any point by eating into the emergency reserves?