Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comment, although it proves to me once again that there is sometimes a need for the opposition members to train themselves how to listen.
What I actually said was that we had paid down the debt before the recession, and that as a result, we were able to maintain our low net debt to GDP ratio through the recession.
I suppose we should be honoured that the hon. member thinks it is our government that caused the recession, but I have to ask him to go back and reread his history. He will see that it was actually a global economic phenomenon and that our government did not cause the recession and did not cause the deficit. It was necessary—