Mr. Speaker, whether it is from the Prime Minister's Office or the Conservatives generally, spin is out there. The Conservative spin is that we are going to have a balanced budget in 2015-16, which happens to be an election year.
I wonder if the member would acknowledge that when the Conservatives took power they were handed a multi-billion dollar surplus from Paul Martin. Prior to the recession the Conservatives turned that budget surplus into a billion dollar plus deficit and now, going into an election year, they are talking about balanced budgets.
Could the member explain to me why a Conservative government has really not been able to balance budgets in any sort of a consistent fashion? As they pointed out, they even turned a surplus into a deficit prior to the recession.