Mr. Chair, I hate to interrupt this Conservative Party infomercial, but it is about time we got back to reality. I would like to remind the House that the greatest deficits in Canadian political history at the federal level were under the former Conservative administration of Brian Mulroney. There were record deficits and poor financial management.
Since there is this past track record which is pretty deplorable and since the minister himself admits that part of his responsibility is to look at economic trends, I would like to ask him a question. Let us go back to 1989 and the huge deficits under the former Conservative administration. That was the year of the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. I would like to ask him a very simple question about economic trends. Since 1989 to the most recent figures available, is the income of most Canadian families up or down?