Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for making that statement. Talking about debt, it brought to mind some points that I like to keep on my BlackBerry, and I will quote some.
In 1963, at the beginning of a Liberal rule, we had a $15.7 billion debt left by the Trudeau government. By 1984, when the Progressive Conservative government took over, that had ballooned to $195 billion. This is amazing. That debt was handed to us.
Let us talk about the deficit that was left at the end of the Progressive Conservative government. It was down to $12 billion. Those are amazing numbers. The Progressive Conservative government of that day dealt with something that was handed to it, which was inexcusable, and with which it dealt. We were handed an infrastructure deficit that was inexcusable.
The hon. member who proposed the motion today talked about all the things that the Liberals were going to do but never did. If they had done them, they would not be asking that question today. Why have we not fixed, in 22 months, what they could not even address in 13 years?
We are all aware that infrastructure weakens over time. We deal with that in our houses. We deal with that in our office buildings. If we do not invest in it, in a structured way with a long term plan, we will end up with the kind of infrastructure deficit that we face today. It is the lack of planning that the Liberal government put into those 13 years that has left us with this.
The hon. member mentioned, in answer to a previous member's question, about it being a little rich. I think it is a little rich that the Liberals would ask us to fix their mistakes of 13 years in 22 months, but we are moving forward. We have a plan and we are investing in it.