Madam Speaker, I was much charmed by my hon. friend's happy little speech about all the sweet and lovely things that are going on in this place. I congratulate him on his immense work of fiction.
Unfortunately, the hon. member did not mention that under the Conservative watch, we have gone from a position of surplus to a position of endless chronic deficits, probably totalling in the neighbourhood of about $175 billion over the next five years.
The government has run the fiscal framework into the ditch. Its excuse is that it had do this because of this worldwide recession. It put in all the stimulus money and the world has been raining Conservative cheques, Conservative logos, Conservative signatures and Conservative happy faces all over the place.
When the Parliamentary Budget Officer asked to be shown how this was working, the government's response was to stonewall and then to dump 4,000 pages' worth of stuff on him. Then in this morning's paper we read that Canada now has the highest rate of unemployment it has had in 11 years.
I ask the hon. member if in fact he can stand in his place and tell the House that anyone should have confidence in the government's management of our nation's economy.