Mr. Chair, it is actually helpful to have a bit of history.
Before the current Prime Minister inherited large Liberal surpluses, the last Conservative prime minister to actually balance the books, even in one year, was not Kim Campbell, not Brian Mulroney, not Joe Clark, nor John Diefenbaker. It was not even R. B. Bennett or Arthur Meighen. We have to go all the way back to Sir Robert Borden in 1912 to find a Conservative government that actually balanced the books.
I will now remind the Minister of Finance of his earlier statement about Liberal governments raising taxes and running deficits. I would ask the minister to repeat that statement while looking me in the eye.