Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. How can a party pretend that it is the party of surpluses when history shows so convincingly that that is incorrect? Some of my friends on the other side do not care about history, but history is important because it tends to repeat itself.
In addition to the points made in my speech, I would just respond to my hon. friend by reminding the House that this tendency for Tory times to be tough times and for Tory times to be deficit times did not begin with Brian Mulroney.
Let us ask the question. Before the current Prime Minister was the lucky inheritor of large Liberal surpluses, how far back in Canadian history do we have to go to find a Conservative government and prime minister that actually managed to balance the books, even for one year? We have to go back to the year the Titanic sank, 1912, to Sir Robert Borden. All of those post-1912 Conservative prime ministers ran nothing but deficits until the current incumbent inherited Liberal surpluses.
Those members seem to be unacquainted with our history. I consider it an honour or a privilege or perhaps at least a useful function to acquaint them with the fiscal history of our country.