Mr. Speaker, I do not give much praise to the government, but I do give a lot of praise to the hon. member opposite, not only because of some of the good work he has done in the House, but also because he is one of the few people I have met in the last decades who has actually read my Ph.D. thesis. I thank him for his good taste in that regard.
I would also acknowledge that Canada has done better than Spain and Greece in terms of recovering from the economic crisis.
However, my view would be that it is largely not the government's doing. It is largely because we had oil, when oil prices were higher, that helped and it is largely because our fiscal house was in order, and that is thanks to the actions of the Liberal government. It is also largely because we did not allow our banks to regulate themselves, which is thanks to the decision by the Liberal government not to allow mergers and not to allow banks to deregulate.
If we put all those ingredients together, while it is true we have done better than Greece and Spain, much of the credit for that rests with the previous Liberal governments of both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.