Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment and ask a question of my colleague across the floor.
In his presentation he spoke about surpluses and seemed to suggest that perhaps opposition parties were paying a little too much attention to surpluses and how difficult it was to accurately forecast surpluses when there was a range of economic forecasts on the issues.
However I hearken back to the last election in 2004 when the Conservative Party came up with its platform. On the financial aspect of it, we had suggested that there would be a series of personal income tax cuts primarily to middle and lower income tax earners over a five year period. Plus we had a program spending platform totalling about $58 billion. We had calculated that to be realistic based on our projections in the previous year's budget, the 2004-05 budget. Using the government's own figures we conservatively projected a surplus of around $7 billion to $8 billion. As we all know, it turned to be about $9 billion.
My point is that at the time the Liberal Party accused the Conservatives in our platform of being fiscally irresponsible and yet in the 2005 budget, lo and behold, the Liberals have come up with a spending program totalling about $55 billion, plus tax cuts graduated over five years. In other words, this is very similar to what we had proposed a short year ago. At that time, we were branded by the Liberals as being fiscally irresponsible and now they are calling themselves fiscally prudent.
I would just like to know why the double standard.