Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's speech and it was quite interesting to hear the NDP's viewpoint, even though I find that there are many problems with his calculations and his logic. His logic leaves a great deal to be desired.
For one thing, it should not surprise our colleagues in the NDP that Canadians do not have confidence in them to form a government of Canada because of their ideas on economics, let alone mathematics, considering my hon. colleague just talked about 13 years of Liberal government.
Yesterday happened to be the 13th anniversary of the 1993 election in which Mr. Chrétien and the government were elected. I was first elected in that year, as my hon. colleague knows, before I took my involuntary sabbatical, as I call it, between 1997 and 2000. My hon. colleague should know that 13 years occurred yesterday. Therefore, the Liberals were in power for 12 years and 2 months. However, the NDP thinks that is 13 years, which is completely illogical and it kind of fits with the rest of his thinking about the deficit and so forth.
Earlier this year we saw the report on poverty in Canada, which indicated that it had been reduced over the past decade. That is totally contrary to what he said. The statistics, the facts are contrary to what he has told us and he knows that, but he wants to create a new myth that things have become so much worse. He knows and, more important, Canadians know that the Liberal government had to deal with the deficit. He thinks we should have ignored it and let it grow and grow. He fails to recognize that the Conservatives left us a $42 billion deficit, which was destroying our economy.
Canadians supported the measures we took and re-elected our government several times. His party never did anything to support any of those cuts, which put our country in much better shape. They helped us build a much better economy and created millions of full time jobs, which made the country and people better off and gave them a better quality of life and standard of living. His party voted against every one of those budgets and every measure ever taken to put our country in better shape.