Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the member's remarks that whipping up rhetoric when an election is close is not the way to manage the economy. If we hear any rhetoric, we heard it in that speech and we hear it from the Minister of Finance daily. We hear it from the Prime Minister, because he and Conservatives are always talking about balancing the books.
Is it not true that the Prime Minister has never had a surplus on his own, other than the one transferred to him by the previous Liberal government? We could call the Prime Minister “deficit king”. Is it not true that under the Prime Minister's watch in the last eight years the debt load of the country has increased at minimum by $133 billion and at maximum by $160 billion? He has added that to the debt of Canadians. Is that not true?
Now Conservatives are saying that they will balance the books. What will the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance cut in terms of value from taxes from Canadians in order to do that? They have cut EI and pretty nearly every service known to mankind in this country during their watch. Canadians are getting less value for their taxes, and that is not rhetoric; those are the facts.