Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate this morning, in some small part to correct some of the government's statistics that we have been hearing.
It should be news to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, because earlier today a Conservative member rose in the House and tripled Canada's performance this year as compared to what the bank itself predicts for our growth, which is somewhere just north of 2%. The government believes it is somewhere north of 6%, which is remarkable news for the people on Bay Street. They should really get on this. The government must have access to new data that nobody else has, which puts it into some level of suspicion.
This motion is interesting to me and many of my New Democratic colleagues. It speaks not only to the current circumstances in this country in the midst of a recession, and the very serious threat of a double-dip recession, as the Canadian housing market has completely cooled off and is not pulling our economy back out of its flatline growth, but also, it is a great comment on the government's ideological underpinnings, its basic philosophy. The government continues to make decisions that seem to poorly fit with the ideas of Canadians and what this country actually needs, which is true investment and true development.
The government's philosophy speaks to a basic sentiment that we can cut our way to prosperity. As any sound businessperson would tell us, if a corporation is in any kind of trouble, one of the temptations is to cut its way to such a small, lean point that prosperity will return. However, the evidence in the corporate cycle shows us that is not true, that true investment is the way to attain, or re-attain in some cases, wealth generation prosperity.
The government has never met any kind of tax cut it does not like, except when it raises taxes, which is another fond, yet strange, element. I represent a riding in British Columbia, one of the hardest hit ridings in this country with respect to the economy. In the midst of our darkest days, this government working in cahoots with the Campbell government in Victoria, British Columbia, decided--and follow the logic if you can, Mr. Speaker, because it is a perverse one--to borrow money from future generations to bribe the province of British Columbia to raise taxes on those same taxpayers, to borrow money from taxpayers to bribe another level of government and then to raise taxes on the province. That is exactly what the harmonized sales tax does.
We are running the largest debt in Canadian history. I would like the Minister of Canadian Heritage to correct me on that one. Are we running the largest debt in Canadian history?