Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's speech, particularly the portion around British Columbia. As the hon. well knows now, two-thirds of his federal riding are now represented by B.C. NDP MLAs. The reason why is very clear. It is because the Gordon Campbell Liberals in B.C. have the largest deficits in British Columbian history and the NDP balanced the books in B.C. That is an important lesson I think his constituents are sending him.
It is also important to note that the worst record in fiscal management in Canadian history was the Mulroney Conservatives. They were talking earlier today about what a wonderful job Brian Mulroney did and they embraced his record. His record was the largest deficits and the worst fiscal period returns in Canadian history.
It is not just from 15 years ago that we see this fiscal ineptitude of the Conservatives. We know that last June we had the largest, most bloated political platform in Canadian history from the Conservatives again. There were $86 billion in spending promises and that was before the leader of the Conservatives threw the aircraft carrier at the last minute. We never did find out what the price tag was for that. It was the most expensive and most financially irresponsible political platform in Canadian history. That is the background of the Conservatives.
I agree with some of his comments about the environment and the Liberal inaction on it and on housing and poverty. That is why the 19 members in this corner of the House got to work to change that so this Parliament would deal with those issues.
He mentioned the term ridiculous. I want to ask the hon. member whether he thought these comments were ridiculous:
I don't think there's anything wrong with blowing the whistle and I don't think there's anything wrong with somebody trying to bribe you. What's wrong is if you take the bribe and he didn't.
That was a comment from the leader of the Conservative Party that it was okay to offer but not to take bribes. The comments were mentioned in the newspaper this morning.