Mr. Speaker, when we interview people to do a job, we often ask them if they have done the job before. If they do not have that much direct experience we might ask if they have done something comparable that could build our confidence that they would be able to do the job.
The government tells us that it will have a balanced budget and that it will have a surplus and so on, but what is that claim rooted in? Has the Conservative Party in government ever done that before? I do not think so. Perhaps once under R.B. Bennett during the Great Depression. Therefore, there is very little confidence-building matter here.
In terms of a more recent example, I would just like to talk about the Mulroney government experience. Under the Trudeau government, the annual average deficit was 2.9% of GDP between 1969 and 1980. Under the Mulroney government, the average annual deficit was 6.7% of GDP, and the debt burden rose dramatically under the Conservative government of the day, from 37.5% of GDP in 1983-84 to 66.6% in 1994-95.
Why should Canadians believe that the government will be able to balance the budget and run a surplus when it has not done so for a very long time?