Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentions that the government has been in power for only 10 months. My heavens, it seems longer than that to most Canadians.
The situation that we inherited when we came into power compared to the situation that his party inherited this year could not really be more different. In fact, I do not think we could find another country that from 1993 to 2006 had such different economic conditions upon assuming office.
We came in with the Mulroney deficit of $41 billion a year, or higher, and we had to do something. The member may recall the headlines about Canada becoming a third world nation with a third world economy. We probably would not have a health care system today, a publicly funded health care system, if we had not improved and restructured the economy.
Were people hurt by that? Some people were hurt. My father was the premier of Nova Scotia at the time, but he understood, as those people did, that certain things had to happen to sustain the health care system. I am proud of the fact that as soon as the economy was in better shape, improvements were made. They were improvements that made a tangible difference in the lives of Canadians.
The member talks about 10 months. I would remind him that the election I talked about was in 2004 and in four months we had achieved a historic agreement that a number of premiers of all stripes agreed with. The Conservatives have had these 10 months and have done nothing.