Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to ask my colleague a question after his speech on the Conservatives' new-found passion for balanced budgets in 2015.
In Bill C-59, they have introduced a balanced budget act to require the government to balance the budget under certain circumstances.
Is my colleague prepared to make this measure retroactive, so that it applies to the Conservatives' last seven deficit budgets? Five of them would not have been accepted, according to the circumstances outlined in the budget implementation bill that allow a government to incur a deficit.
Would my colleague be prepared to make this proposal retroactive, so that cabinet ministers would have to pay out of their own pockets for all the Conservatives' deficit budgets that did not comply with the bill they are introducing today?