Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the hon. member is smoking. We are talking about simple facts here.
When the Liberals came to power in 1993 the deficit was $42 billion. That is a fact. That was the legacy which we inherited from the Mulroney government. As a consequence of that the Government of Canada's credit had been downgraded in 1992. That was one year before the Conservatives lost, I would point out to the member. It took 10 years of hard Liberal work to fix up the Conservatives' mess and to restore our credit rating to AAA. That is a fact.
The second fact is that when the current government came to power, it had a $13 billion surplus, not a $42 billion deficit. There is a difference. Not only that but the latest figures coming out of the finance department show that it may be en route to another huge surplus in excess of $10 billion, thanks to Liberal management.
Of course I believe in democracy. The Conservatives are in government but when they inherit riches of that scale, it gives them a special responsibility to use that money wisely. By cutting programs to the most vulnerable, by slashing research, by raising income tax, the government is simply squandering the massive inheritance that it received from the Liberals.