Madam Speaker, the member should recall that in 1993, the Liberals had inherited a $42 billion deficit from the Conservatives. There was a budget crisis in the air. The IMF was going to come to Canada, and the Wall Street Journal said we were a third-world country. There was a crisis atmosphere. That is why the Liberals made significant cuts, as he says.
However, after balancing the budget in two years, we reinvested those funds in the economy, and in particular in the health accord and the agreement with the aboriginal people.
And if it had not been for the NDP bringing down the Liberal government in 2005, we would have enacted child care, we would have enacted Kelowna, and Canada would have been a much better place.