Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Bloc leader for his words. I have a few questions for him.
Before I ask the question, one of the big stories of the last 12 years has been the elimination of the deficit. The government will certainly try to take all the credit for that, but I think that arguably free trade, swelling of government revenues and the implementation of the very difficult but good tax, called the GST, was responsible for that success story.
The real story of the last 12 years though has been one of lost opportunities. We have had surpluses over the last number of years which we have not had in three decades, yet the government has squandered opportunity. National unity is on the slide, and I disagree with my hon. colleague from the Bloc Québécois on that file. I believe in one country and one strong, united Canada. It has been on a slide as a direct result of the government's mishandling of the Quebec file. Native conditions continue to be abhorrent in the country. The environment and smog issues are ever increasingly difficult in the GTA. Productivity continues to slide.
The story of the last 12 years has been one of lost opportunities. However, the worst story of the last 12 years, and one that should cause concern for all Canadians regardless of their partisan stripe, is the subversion of democracy.
In 1997 the party in power won that election with 155 seats out of 301 seats with a margin--