Mr. Speaker, I will pick up on my colleague's comments and recap for a second.
Let us see where we have come from.
In 1995, Canada balanced its budget. For 10 years, we had 10 consecutive years of surpluses. In 2006, the Conservative government was elected with a $13 billion surplus. Even before the recession hit, which the government denied, the government increased spending by 19%, the single largest increase in spending in Canadian history, making it the biggest-spending and biggest-borrowing government in Canadian history. The Minister of Finance rejected a bailout of the car industry, but had to because a pistol was put to his head by the Premier of Ontario and the President of the United States.
The record now is we see two sets of books on the F-35 and the PBO cannot get members to actually disclose the facts. We certainly have had the biggest billboards in Canadian history, with $30 million spent on 9,000 billboards across the country to advertise the budget. Now we are left with a $128 billion increase in debt.
It is the same old same old. These republican reformers are the same. They cut taxes, they increase spending, they borrow the money and they compromise public services.