Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's demonstration of the insanity of the Mulroney fiscal economics. For goodness sakes, if we have not learned anything over the past number of years, surely it is that we cannot run deficits in the country.
Mr. Mulroney occupied office from 1984 to 1993. Not one year did the accumulated deficit, or what we call a debt, go down. After this government took over in 1993, it took us three years to arrest that slide into deficit. It was only in 1997, after we had paid a huge political cost, were we able to arrest that fiscal insanity as given to us by the Mulroney years.
The hon. member invites us to go back to Mulroney economics. I do not think so. For goodness sakes, in 1989 we had some of the best economic circumstances the country had ever enjoyed and still we had a runaway deficit.
I wonder whether the hon. member actually knows that the bill was returned to the House as a blank piece of paper and that we have only been able to put back into that blank piece of paper the fiscal contingencies that are necessary in order to propose this unplanned surplus legislation?
The government has learned from the Mulroney excesses and that member and his party have yet to learn from the Mulroney excesses.