Mr. Speaker, it is a little ironic to hear the member talk like that, since the Department of Finance itself has said that the NDP performs well fiscally. Moreover, that is not the case for just one year or in a single province, but rather in all provinces since 1980.
Incidentally, those that have performed the worst in terms of balancing budgets have been the provincial Liberal governments. If he wants to talk about Manitoba, I can talk about other provinces that have performed rather poorly, although their governments are supposedly better money managers than the NDP. I will therefore not take a lesson in managing public finances from the Liberal Party.
Fiscal responsibility is part of the NDP philosophy, and has been since the days of Tommy Douglas. When he was premier of Saskatchewan, he had balanced budgets for 17 consecutive years, out of the 18 years he served as premier, so that is definitely part of the NDP philosophy, regardless of what the other parties say.