Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the budget must meet these tests: it must protect the most vulnerable, it must provide the jobs for today in every region of the country, and it must create the jobs for tomorrow without leaving a legacy of debt and a permanent deficit for our children.
In September the government was telling Canadians that there would not be a recession. In November it was projecting a surplus. Now it has given us our first deficit in a decade.
Why has the government been so wrong about the state of our economy, even when every other G8 country was taking action? Why did it spend the cupboard bare when the times were good, harming our ability to protect our country when times were tough? Why has the government failed to act when more than 100,000 Canadian jobs have been lost since Parliament was shut down a month ago?