Madam Speaker, the hon. member was doing so well up to beaches and lobster.
He is correct that the fundamentals of the economy, which were put in place by a good friend of many of us on this side, Paul Martin, and the resistance of a former government to things like bank mergers, which most people on the other side agreed with at the time, are largely responsible for the fact that we did not do as badly as some other economies.
The point is, and I will use an aeronautical analogy, had someone been doing something else other than just being on auto pilot, like those members were, we might have avoided racking up such a huge deficit. To turn the argument over on my friend, a huge deficit does affect everybody in Canada and probably will affect the regions more.
When we get down to budget deficit slaying, the people of Atlantic Canada know they will be the ones to suffer. They know that budget deficits need to be dealt with and ACOA and the other shoes that may drop, Marine Atlantic, who knows, these will be the first things that the Conservative government will look at because it cares not for Atlantic Canada.