Mr. Speaker, first I would ask the government how it can claim it is taking immediate action or that there will be little time for the money to trickle down, since we know that in September the government said there would be no recession and in October that there would be no deficit. A surplus was even predicted as early as November, despite Canada's having the second-worst-performing economy of the G8 nations for the first half of 2008 and despite losses of 105,000 jobs in the last 60 days.
Second, how can the government claim to be a good money manager, given that it inherited a $12 billion surplus and now predicts a $64 billion deficit?