Mr. Speaker, first, let us be clear. The finance minister of Canada never ran a deficit when he was the finance minister in Ontario, never. He inherited a deficit from the NDP and he cleaned it up in large measure.
Also, let us talk about net debt. Net government debt is the standard used by the OECD to compare countries' debt positions. In fact, when the Liberal Party was the government, in its last fall update, on page 67, it put in a table comparing Canada's net government debt with other G-7 countries.