Mr. Speaker, as the finance minister tables his budget today I would like to remind the opposition parties and all Canadians of how history has proven over and over again that one cannot trust anything he says.
Since the time when he was the Ontario finance minister for the Harris government, he has done nothing but make false statements about how he left the province deficit free. However, when the Liberal government took power, it discovered an exorbitant deficit of $5.6 billion.
In 2007 he said there would be no recession. A few months later, Canada was hit with one of the worst economic downturns in history.
He said there would be no deficit. But then he plunged Canada into a deficit even before the recession began. All this led us to a historic $100 billion deficit.
He talks about austerity in spending, meanwhile his wastefulness and poor fiscal management has driven up government spending by 18%.
He therefore made his government the biggest spending government in history.
Why would anyone believe a word the finance minister says?