Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased to have the chance to set the record straight. I was a member of a government that was suffering through the worst recession that this country has ever known. We have since found out that particular recession was something that even the international community did not fully understand and has not fully understood until the present time. The world was reeling and Ontario was in terrible trouble because it had lost half a million jobs due to a free trade agreement that a certain Conservative government had put in place.
In order to maintain the services of the province, the NDP had to do remarkable things. We could not rely on the federal government because the Conservatives and then the Liberals did nothing but cut, cut, cut transfer payments and reduced our ability to help. In fact, the Conservatives promised that there would be a training allowance for people who lost their jobs. We never saw a dime. In order to make sure that when the recession ended in 1994 there was an Ontario left, the NDP did what it needed to do. It--