Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend opposite from Durham for his comments in respect to the legislation before the House. While I take his comments to heart, I do not necessarily agree with his characterization that this side of the House is one of “tax-and-spend”, to use his nomenclature.
As the member was giving a history lesson to this side of the House and although I know that he might not have been here earlier, since he also joined the 41st Parliament like I did in a by-election, I want to ask him how he would characterize, for example, the $160 billion in debt that was incurred under his previous government and used and justified by that government to deal with the difficult economy in 2008-09.