Mr. Speaker, I always listen with interest when I hear the Liberals over there say that they left this government in such a good fiscal state.
The fact is that the debt the country struggled with for nine years under the Conservative government was in fact Liberal debt. That is just a plain fact. All we need do is to look back at the history of when those huge deficits started. Who was the finance minister who really pushed that? It was Mr. Chrétien.
The fact is that it was just simple compound interest growth and Conservative policies that gave the government the capacity to finally address the issue. Unfortunately, the Liberals came to power after that and they squandered the money. The debt is almost $500 billion. If we would have had a Conservative government along the way with fiscal policies, that debt would probably now be $400 billion instead of $500 billion. The Liberals squandered it all over the place.