Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member from the Liberal side of the House talk about the surplus. It is a good thing to have a surplus in the budget. However, I would remind her that for the past eight years her government has lowballed the surplus to the tune of almost $80 billion in terms of the amount over eight years.
We had the CEO of the congressional budget office before our finance committee. She talked about the independent budget forecast of the Americans. She told us that either the administration or the independent budget office could be out, but they were not consistently out one way all the time. In other words, they do not consistently overestimate or underestimate. There are a lot of variables. In fact, it would be wrong on the low side as often as it would be wrong on the high side.
I put it to the member that what this does is hurt the credibility of this government. It hurts the credibility of the industry that is assisting it. At a time when we have had a real flurry of corporate malfeasance across North America, I would think the finance minister and the government would want to be as credible as possible.
Only six weeks after the budget was presented on February 23, the fiscal forecasters hired by the finance committee has hired, have already said that the finance minister's figure is not accurate. They are already saying that it is $3 billion higher than six weeks ago.
I see that the member is getting some help from the parliamentary secretary. I do not think it will help because this is indefensible.
The Liberals are at it again. How does this member defend the practice of lowballing surpluses all the time?