Mr. Speaker, if the member wants to inform the House, he should inform it about the real facts. He is talking about when the Liberal government took over. The real fact is in the mid-nineties there was a $43 billion deficit. That is when we were characterized as a third world country in terms of our financial health. If we did not get our fiscal house in order, the situation that the Conservatives created would have continued to spiral down.
How could we get our fiscal house in order? It took some tough decision making and it took some cuts. In fact, the Government of Canada itself took a greater level of cuts, but I know Canadians absorbed a lot of the burden. There were a lot of cuts to important programs, but we have to look at how our economy looks today.
Today we have the best financial situation in the G-7. Our growth rate continues to lead the G-7. Our financial health is very good. Every dollar cut in those programs during the years when we had to clean up the mess left by the Conservatives was reinvested. We had $130 billion of income tax cuts and we invested hundreds of millions of dollars back into the health care system, even $42 billion to establish benchmark wait times.
We could do that because there was fiscal prudence and fiscal responsibility. When we have a problem, we deal with it. We have to take the pain: short term pain; long term gain.