Mr. Speaker, last week we lost a great defender of personal freedom. Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman was truly one of the great economic thinkers of all time.
To Friedman, inflation was a product of too much government and very bad government monetary policy. In the midst of runaway inflation, big spenders like Pierre Trudeau and Bob Rae ignored his advice. Fortunately, there was more enlightened leadership in the U.K. and the United States and they had positive results.
Milton Friedman was always a critic of big government, big spenders and big taxes. He was always a great defender of the individual's freedom to make his or her own choices.
Dr. Friedman coined many phrases. Perhaps his most famous was that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Today, only socialists, big spending Liberals and the foolhardy believe there is a free lunch.