Mr. Speaker, I know there are some enthusiastic members, but they will have their opportunity to ask me some questions when I am finished.
Now the Liberals are saying, “We rescued Canada”. On what basis did they rescue Canada? There were two policy initiatives that brought money into the coffers of the government. What were those two initiatives? The GST and free trade. Again, both were initiatives by Mr. Mulroney. Whether we like him or dislike him is quite irrelevant: those initiatives brought the money into the treasury and have made the prior finance minister, now Prime Minister, look good. All he had to do was collect the money. That is essentially what happened.
At the same time, of course, the Liberals were raising taxes and spending, spending, spending. I find it interesting that at the same time as all the money was rolling in, some of my colleagues were in provincial governments. We bore the brunt of the finance minister's cuts in health care, education, infrastructure and all of those matters. We had to balance the books while they balanced their books on the backs of the provinces and the municipalities.
Some of their socialist friends still do not understand what free trade has done for the country. In my riding, there is a New Democrat candidate who said he is proud to be a member of a party that is opposed to free trade. On the front page of my weekly newspaper there is a New Democrat saying he is proud to be a member of a party that opposes free trade. In my riding, 80% of the manufactured goods go across the line into the United States. If free trade was shut down, thousands of my constituents would be out of work. I dare say the same is true for many of us here. Yet we have a New Democratic Party that is opposed to free trade, that wants to shut down trade.
Just recently, in fact, we had a member of the House stand up and call for sanctions against the Americans because of the international water dispute over Devils Lake. I disagree with what the Americans are doing on Devils Lake, but to simply say “let us impose trade sanctions against the Americans” when we are sending 80% of our manufactured goods across the line is the kind of philosophy that has generated this $4.6 billion spending spree. Those people actually think the money would occur, as it did in the Trudeau years when it was just printed. If we run out of money, we just print it, that is the philosophy. Inflation runs up. Interest rates run up. People suffer.
That philosophy of the NDP against free trade, against the workers in my constituency, has infected this Liberal government and the evidence is in Bill C-48.