Mr. Speaker, in the last part of the member's question, he talked about getting in bed with the NDP. One thing I will never be party to in the House is to be a member of any party, like my friend across, that gets in bed with the Bloc Québécois. Never will I get in bed with the Bloc Québécois, and the member should be ashamed of that.
He talked about the $24 billion. That is ongoing programs and initiatives. However, there is one thing the government pledges to Canadians. It will not go into a deficit. When the hon. member's party left power in 1993, the annual deficit, not the accumulated deficit, was $43 billion. I have asked the question a hundred times. Why did things go so wrong? How could an annual deficit get to $43 billion? I have asked them 10, 20, 30, 100 times and they have never given me an answer. All I can say is that they were totally incompetent in running the economy of the government.