Mr. Speaker, Conservatives love to cite quotes with no context and the Liberals like to go the middle way, the sensible way.
The explanation for that quote is the Prime Minister one day was talking about Canada leading the way out, that we would have no recession. The next day he was ruminating about depression. The context for that quote was it immediately followed the Prime Minister's irresponsible talk about the possibility of depression. It was incumbent upon me, after that irresponsible depression talk by the Prime Minister, to tell Canadians that, yes, things were not that terribly wonderful, but we were not heading into depression. It was up to me to inject a note of optimism after the depression talk by the Prime Minister.