Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives like people to think they are fiscally prudent and economically responsible but we have a history. No Conservative government since Borden has ever balanced budgets. When the Liberal government inherited the books of the previous Conservative government in 1993, there was a $42 billion deficit and a $500 billion debt and it was compounding at an interest rate that was unparalleled. I was doing receiverships at that time and this was totally unparalleled.
What did we do? By 1997, we turned the books around and in 2000 gave a $100 billion tax cut, which was a stimulus for the economy. We invested in cities and in infrastructure. We made a lot of investments to the benefit of the general public.
It is important for the Conservatives to realize that whenever they take over government, they go into a deficit. When they inherited $16 billion in surplus, why did they whittle it away? What did they do? Where is their economic judgment? I think one has to question that.