Yes, it is the Enron government accounting practices.
In terms of the U.S. tax package, the hon. member is simply wrong. The fact is we have and, after the full implementation of our Canadian tax reduction, will still have significantly higher personal income taxes, corporate taxes and capital taxes than in the U.S. That is one of the reasons the U.S. continues to be a magnet for capital and this country under his government continues to be a repellant.
Canada has among the highest income taxes in the G-7 and the second highest corporate taxes in the OECD. This is hardly a record to boast about.
I am glad the member mentioned the previous government's record. The government in 1984 inherited a $39 billion deficit, which, as a percentage of GDP, was 9%. Over a nine year period that government reduced the deficit as a percentage of GDP from 9% to almost half of that, to around 4%. At the same time it had the courage to introduce a free trade policy and used political collateral to leap ahead of the Canadian public and actually take a political risk in the 1988 election to introduce a free trade policy. It actually took the political risk of getting rid of a manufacturers' sales tax, which was pummeling investment and hurting productivity, and replaced it with the GST which was a more rational tax. It made more sense economically. Politically, it was about as popular as a skunk at a picnic, but it was the right thing to do.
Where was his party on all those issues? His party was vociferously fighting against every single initiative of that government, not just to reduce the deficit as a percentage of GDP but also to implement the types of policies required to guide Canada through the nineties as those policies have to a period of greater prosperity and success for all Canadians. That government planted the seeds and this government picked the flowers.