Mr. Speaker, I could expand on my colleague's list of the government's silly statements, contradictory statements, all over the map statements. The member may recall that two months ago the Prime Minister very irresponsibly spoke of Canada heading into depression. More recently he has lurched to the other extreme and talked in Pollyanna terms about Canada snapping out of recession before anyone else. He has gone from one extreme to the other. It is not so much optimism or pessimism; it is all over the map. It leads us to the position where I do not think anyone can believe what he says any more on the state of the economy.
In terms of the member's question as to why we would pass the budget, notwithstanding its many inadequacies which are too numerous to mention, I would remind him that Canada is in a state of economic crisis right now. Jobs are falling by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Had we joined the NDP in voting down the government over the budget, we would be in an election now. We would have delayed the flow of billions of dollars by several months.
While the NDP is free to act irresponsibly without consequence, we in the Liberal Party have to understand that we have to also take account of the state of the economy and the needs of the unemployed people. It was our conclusion that it would not have been responsible to cause an election, to cause a delay of months in getting the money out the door even though the budget left much to be desired.