Mr. Speaker, I am glad the Mulroney Conservatives are applauding that comment.
The member from British Columbia must be deaf in his left ear because I never even mentioned the sponsorship program in my remarks. He was complimenting me on my comments about the sponsorship program but I never mentioned it at all.
If is funny if the people of British Columbia are that upset with the NDP because the NDP is now skyrocketing to the top of the polls. His friend Gordon Campbell now is trailing the NDP in British Columbia, or he is darned close to trailing. I have seen polls in British Columbia that are tied with the NDP slightly ahead. At any rate the NDP is skyrocketing in British Columbia.
I am glad he also raised the question of fiscal responsibility. The record in this country shows that the NDP provincial governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba over the years have been leading examples of fiscal responsibility. When there was a Conservative government led by his friend Grant Devine in my province, he almost bankrupted the province of Saskatchewan. His Conservatives also had 16 criminal convictions of fraud in Saskatchewan.
That great conservative hero of the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, George Bush, is running one of the biggest deficits in the history of the world. We could go back to the 1930s and who had the great debts were the Conservatives under R.B. Bennett. All over the place it is the Conservatives who are fiscally irresponsible with taxpayers' money.
Here we have the Conservative Party--