Mr. Speaker, my colleague has made some wise comments. Let me respond very briefly, first in terms of history and then in terms of the future.
The historical record is utterly clear. Whether one is talking about Ontario, and Eves plus the current minister of finance, or Mulroney in Canada, or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, the lesson from history is that it is always the Conservatives or the Republicans who create the big, fat deficits and it is always the Liberals or the Democrats who are left to clean up the ugly Conservative mess. That is history and I do not think that can be disputed.
The future is a bit harder to predict than the past. Given that the Conservatives inherited such huge surpluses, it would be premature to say that a deficit is imminent, but they are certainly skating closer to the edge than we ever would have. If the economy does weaken, not hugely but a bit more, we could be seeing a Conservative deficit. That would certainly be consistent with history and that would quite likely mean another Conservative deficit left for Liberals to clean up.