Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals were elected in 1993, we had an over $42 billion deficit left to us by the Conservative government. We were at a point where we were being chastised by third world countries about what had happened to Canada. There was no choice but to take very hard, swift action to try to get Canada back into the zone where it was supposed to be.
Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien had the courage to make the kinds of cuts that had to be made to bring everything into line, and for two or three years everybody had to suffer a little bit. However, where were we 13 years later? We ended up with a $14 billion surplus, investments going into health care, a 10-year health accord, Kyoto, the Kelowna agreement, all kinds of things moving our country forward in the way it was supposed to.
That was a tough decision to make, but the Liberals clearly had the foresight and the courage to do that. I really question the kind of budgeting there would have been if we would have had the NDP in charge at that time.