Mr. Speaker, all I do know is that when the Auditor General reported on each and every one of the nine years of the Brian Mulroney government, there were deficits added to the debt. In fact, the debt got as high as about $500 billion.
We are just a little bit below that today even though we have had balanced budgets since 1997, the reason being the deficit that had to be eaten away. In 1994, I believe the $42 billion deficit went down to something like $27 billion. It actually went up to $550 billion. Then we paid down about $60 billion worth of debt, so we are just a little better with the total federal debt than we were when we started. In fact, it is almost the same.
Basically the member said that “if only we had not raised the spending”, but I think he has to understand that the spending that occurred during that period of time was to help Canadians most in need. I think that is the difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Conservatives say they will cut to certain levels, regardless of what it is for, while Liberals say they will take care of our health care system and they will take care of the--