Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Malpeque strikes an important cord in this whole debate and that is that government should be prepared. It should be prepared for economies that go up or down, for all kinds of eventualities.
The reality is when the last government left office, there was an annual surplus of around $12 billion a year. That has continued for a while, but now under the current government's spending plans and its estimates going forward, that surplus will actually fall to zero.
A couple of very prominent economists have said that in a scenario of a moderately weakening Canadian economy, that remaining surplus will actually become a deficit of $600 million within the next year. That is not where we need to go.
If the government goes from a surplus to a balanced budget to a deficit, Canadians can kiss goodbye any tax measures for the next 10 years because they are not going to happen. An opportunity is being squandered.
I never thought that the Conservative government that believes in less government being more effective, being more a government which is its credo, would ever do this to the treasury of Canada.