Madam Speaker, this is ironic. The arrangement with the NDP-Liberal coalition today is the exact same thing that put this country on the road to ruin and caused the massive start of the deficit financing back in the 1960s under the last NDP-Liberal coalition. This is the same kind of coalition that grew the size of government.
In 1965 we had about the same level of government in Canada as in the United States. About 30% of our GDP was taken up by government. Then we had the Liberal-NDP coalition. What happened? The size of the United States government was 29%. The size of our government grew to 42%.
That is what happened. The government grew the size of useless government. The Liberals deficit financed under Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal coalition with David Lewis. That socialism was a runaway disaster and the Conservative government of the day was left to pay a massive amount of interest payments of over $40 billion a year. No wonder the debt grew during the time to which the member is referring.
Then I recall coming here in 1993 when the Prime Minister, the then finance minister, continued to run up that debt. He did not stop it. He ran it up another $85 billion. In fact, our current debt today is still not down to the level when he took power in 1993.