Madam Speaker, I listened to the very informed remarks of my colleague from Kitchener Centre, and prior to her, the member for Toronto--Danforth. It was refreshing to hear the positive stuff.
The government has recognized the mistakes made with the sponsorship program, and the government is dealing with it. I listened to the member for Cypress Hills--Grasslands and the member for Cumberland--Colchester. They rattled off some events in our financial history of which we are not that proud. In fact we would rather they had not happened, but they did. It is a big organization. The government spends $180 billion a year.
There seems to be an absence of some other events in our financial or fiscal history that the members opposite seem to be ignoring, for example, the elimination of a $42 billion deficit in three years. My colleague was right. When we were at a level of a $42 billion annual deficit, $150 million every calendar day was leaving Ottawa. We have eliminated that in three years.
The government has paid down $46 billion against the debt, and that is saving all of us over $3 billion every year in perpetuity. Those are funds that can be redeployed to other areas.
We have had one of the strongest economic growth performance records among the OECD and the G-7. Perhaps the members opposite have forgotten that.
We have had strong job creation, in fact stronger job creation than in the United States. We have had low inflation during all this period, and low interest rates. Many Canadians can afford to buy homes now, and are buying homes.
We have had the largest single tax cut in Canadian history: $100 billion.
We recognize the problems. The members opposite talk about the numbers, such as with HRDC. Remember the difficulties we had there? I am sure my colleague will remember that. The figure of $1 billion was mentioned. Of course politically it is quite attractive to throw out the figure of $1 billion. I think it was something like $6,000 which was finally reconciled as being a problem.
Does my colleague from Kitchener Centre think the members opposite are simply forgetting these milestones in our economic history, which are recognized worldwide, or are they deliberately hiding those facts because they know it makes partisan sense for them to do that?