Ouch, Mr. Speaker, ouch.
However, the name Grant Devine comes to mind. In fact, it got so bad for the Conservatives that in 1981 they took over a profitable province of Saskatchewan from Alan Blakeney, who never once ran a deficit, and in nine short years they ran it to almost a $12 billion debt, a $600 million deficit. It took Roy Romanow and his finance minister everything to fix that province.
I see the Conservatives stand up and talk about the farmers and BSE and they are absolutely correct to do that. They should be congratulated for standing up for the farmers. The reality is that the border is not a provincial matter. It is a federal matter. Any funding coming to help those farmers should not be on the backs of the provinces. It should be on the back of the federal government. That is where that argument should take place.
If the member wants to discuss Grant Devine, we could. We could go on to Brian Mulroney, Sinclair Stevens and the list goes on and on. That is why Mr. Mulroney did not even make the top 50 of the greatest Canadians on CBC.