Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada is the party of Manley, Chrétien and Martin. It is the party that has seen economic turmoil in the past and the party that has been able to deal with the nation's finances in a prudent and reasonable way. It has not, in the 10 years prior to the present government's coming to office, gone into deficit. In fact, we have run surpluses.
As the hon. member rightly said, it took us three years to dig out from the previous Conservative mess in order to right the ship of state. At the same time, we did not take it out on the civil servants.
Every program has to be subject to expenditure review, except that this government does not seem to be interested in dealing with program spending and it does not seem to be interested in dealing with transfers. It seems to be interested only in beating the civil service over the head with a two-by-four. That is no way to run a government.