Mr. Speaker, the member has really blown her cover. Talking about the environment, Kyoto deals with carbon dioxide and water vapour. As a result of the hon. member's speech, we got more of both in this place than we had before.
The member talked about double digit interest rates. I remember doing some mathematical consulting for people who were facing foreclosure on their homes at that time and who thought they were getting a bad deal. This did occur, as I recall, near the early 1980s, before the Conservatives came to power. It was under a Liberal government that it happened.
I am thinking also of the debt that members opposite keep talking about. They keep blaming the Conservatives. We need to remember that if the Conservatives in 1984 would have had no debt from the Liberals, there would have been no debt in 1993, because in those nine intervening years, the Conservative government had a balanced budget on program spending. The amount that was added to the debt is simply the compound interest on the debt that the Conservatives inherited in 1984.
At this point, I ought to say that this is accurate. The member will get up and try to refute it by a whole bunch of more hot air and moisture, but the fact of the matter is that mathematically it is correct. I know it is, because I did that particular mathematical computation at the time of my election in 1993. The Conservative candidate said this and I was going to blow him out of the water, but being an honest guy and being a math type, I checked the math and sure enough, take the debt that the Liberals gave to the Conservatives in 1984, add the compound interest at the rate of the day and we end up with the debt that the Conservatives had at the time. We could perhaps hold them responsible for not correcting the Liberal errors faster, but that is about as far as we can go.
Furthermore, in the intervening years, the years that the Liberals like to brag about, addressing the issue of the deficit and all that, they did it by taking $30 billion out of the employees' pension fund and by robbing and raping the EI fund. That is how they did it.
Furthermore, we add things like the GST, which most Canadians do not like, but the Liberals have been raking it off. The Liberals ran in 1993 on the promise to kill it. Meanwhile they have been using it. They have been overtaxing on EI by huge amounts, $45 billion. If we would have had a responsible government over there, the debt would have come way down instead of just the little bit that they have moved it. I call it just plain spin doctoring on their part. They are really not up to it in terms of financial responsibility.
I will concede that they are Liberals and they could have spent more than they did, so I suppose we need to give them just a little gentle congratulations for following our advice and responding when we pushed for balanced budgets and stopped the borrowing.
I remember we had a plan in 1993 which was the zero in three. The Liberals said they could not do it, that they had all this deficit, so they cut all these programs. We simply accurately read the economic statements. On economic forecasting the Liberals are total wipe outs. If I were their instructor, they would all get zero in that course.
As a matter of fact, we read it accurately. We said it could be done. The fact that they did it proves that it was doable. Meanwhile, they smeared us. I could go on and on, but I know I am on questions and comments and I have to give the hon. member an opportunity to respond, which I really do not want to do. I do not want to hear what she will say because it will be unbelievable.