Mr. Speaker, if we go into the future and continue to build up a very substantial national debt, we must remember that every year's deficit gets added to the national debt. We cannot keep doing that year after year, as we did during the first years of the recession. From a purely economic point of view, the recession is actually over in Canada. It continues to exist elsewhere.
If we had gone on and continued to build the national debt, which I think would be the inevitable result if the NDP were actually carrying out what they proposed, the result would be a massive debt faced in the future by people like myself when we retire and by our children when they enter the workforce. That, when it is put in combination with the very substantial obligations that we face paying old age security, Canada pension plan and the very substantial health benefits that will go to seniors, would have the effect of creating an unsustainable burden on taxpayers.
In the end, services including life-saving services such as health care would inevitably be cut. Pensions might very well be cut in practice, if not nominally, through the government inflating its way out. I think that is the solution many European countries will adopt and it is a very unwise solution.