Mr. Speaker, as a young person growing up, Sunday nights I would sit in front of the television and watch The Wonderful World of Disney . One of my favourites was Davy Crockett from Adventureland. Another part that I really enjoyed was Fantasyland. Every now and then they would have a feature on Fantasyland. I was sitting here thinking back to those days and when I listened to the comments from the member for Edmonton--Sherwood Park, I thought that it was fantasyland all over again.
He talked about the Laffer curve and I am not sure if that is spelled l-a-u-g-h-e-r, but if we take that argument to its logical extreme, then no taxes is the best solution. Of course everyone would like no taxes, but the reality is that if we did not have any taxes, we would not be able to fund the many programs that are so valuable to Canadians. The market does not solve everything.
In fact this is what happened in the province of Ontario and under Reaganomics, the trickle down theory. Mike Harris tried it and said all he had to do was cut taxes, the world would unfold and all this revenue would be generated, but the reality is he cut some health services and education programs to the bone and now the province is having to rebuild them. We know about those theories.
The part that I found really comical was when the member tried to argue that the Conservative government actually paved the way to deal with the deficit and reduce the debt. We know in fact that Brian Mulroney or his finance minister set targets. His finance minister, Michael Wilson, did not actually have much of a mandate because his prime minister kept pulling the rug out from under him, as we all know. The finance minister set targets to reduce the deficit but he never did. In fact, he built bigger deficits. During the Mulroney era the Conservatives had a chance.
The argument that the member puts forward that the Conservatives could have done better is like saying that the Liberal hockey team won 80 games this year, the Conservatives won 20, but we could have done better and maybe we could have won 85 games.
It is well acknowledged that the current finance minister and ones beyond him have really taken on this job and eliminated the deficit. We are paying down the debt and that is what Canadians expect us to do.