Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member intently when he spoke of our tremendous plan to bring Canada out of this recession quickly during this very difficult time. He mentioned some of the great things that are happening.
However, I would like to talk about the difficult choices we have to make. Our planning is basically the beginning of a new deal to get Canada out of this recession, but some of the choices we made go against the grain.
We as a Conservative Party and a Conservative government prefer balanced budgets and modest surpluses, but during certain times deficits have to be incurred in order to get out of a particular difficult situation.
I ask the member to reflect on those difficult choices and to talk about them. Perhaps he could think of some other governments that had difficult choices to make. I ask the member to talk about the choices we made to maintain certain types of funding that in previous times would have been cut back.