Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend across the aisle for her positive comments about my re-election and the NDP wave, which I somehow managed to survive. I congratulate her as well for her re-election.
However, I take some exception to these remarks about Liberals cutting transfers to provinces, et cetera. She is talking about 16 years ago, in 1995. I would point out that this action was taken, and I would not subscribe to her definition of it, but there were severe cutbacks, she is right about that, because the Liberals of the day inherited a super huge $42 billion Conservative deficit. We were on the brink of a fiscal crisis.
The most important point is, and the finance minister should listen to this, what were the finance minister's colleagues of the day, the Conservative Party and the Reform Party, in the mid-1990s saying to the Liberal government? They were saying, “Cut more. You're not cutting enough”. And now they turn around and say that we cut too much. They cannot have it both ways. They said, at the time, “You're not cutting nearly enough”. I remember those days very well.