Mr. Speaker, first of all, the current leader of the Liberal Party did indeed try practising this kind of economics with disastrous results in Ontario. The father of the future leader of the Liberal Party did the same thing federally. We had to suffer years of deficits as a result of that.
Theoretical Keynesian economics, as written by Lord Keynes, was a system in which governments would spend substantially, run deficits in hard times, and then would run substantial surpluses and collect the funds necessary for the next crisis in good times.
That is not the way it works in reality. The incentive for politicians to spend more and not raise taxes, at all times, results in impractical Keynesian economics. It results in the kind of stagflation that has large deficits that are dealt with through inflation, which destroys growth prospects as we saw in the 1970s.
I would very much like to say that, as a rule, it should be avoided and we should simply try to practice good housekeeping at all times.