Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to the member. In previous times he was probably the best House leader that the Liberal Party has ever had. I would like to congratulate him for some very good work in this Parliament.
I have a couple of comments that I would like to make about his speech, one which I really want to emphasize.
The Liberals love to say, as he did again, that it was during the time of a Conservative government that the national debt rose at unprecedented levels. The mathematics of that is true, but all one has to do is look at the exponential curve on the growth of the debt if no payments are made toward it. I have taught mathematics, and I did the mathematics on this.
In 1993 I ran against a Conservative candidate and a Liberal candidate. The Liberal was way back when the polling was finally done. It was during that time when I did this math. The Conservative candidate said that the Conservatives had not added, through any program borrowing, any money to the debt. Over the nine years of their mandate, they had a balanced budget on program expenditures.
I checked this because I argued with this guy on the hustings. Having a little knowledge of math and finance, I checked it out and he was right spot on.
If we look at the debt the Conservatives inherited from the Liberals in 1984 and look at the debt in 1993, it is almost exactly equal to the amount of debt that the Liberals left them with accumulated interest. One could say that the Conservatives were in error in not addressing that debt more quickly. However, that is like saying an archer has shot an arrow and it is somebody else's fault it met its mark because somebody else should have caught that arrow in the air. It was a difficult time.
I would like to correct the member on that. It was not the Conservative's fault. It was a Liberal inherited debt from years past that caused this, and we are still burdened under it.
I would like the member's response, if he has one.