Madam Speaker, I welcome my friend back. I very much echo his sentiments and words to our families and supporters who enable us to be in this place and to speak on behalf of the good people in our constituencies.
It is somewhat ironic to hear Conservatives criticize and lecture Liberals about running big deficits and debts. The Conservatives left government having run more than $150 billion in the hole and all we got for it was a loss of half a million manufacturing jobs in Canada. Canadians will continue to pay that bill for a while.
He has some notion or obsession, as the Conservatives did, around the doubling of the TFSA. It was commented on by Joe Oliver, the former finance minister, because we know that doubling balloons the cost to government by multiple billions of dollars within 15 years. When asked, the former finance minister said that it was not for us to worry about, that it was for the prime minister's granddaughter to concern herself with. The former finance minister sometimes struggled with metaphors. The point is that to suggest that we throw the cost down to future generations is a responsible thing for government to do seems the very opposite of the definition of “conservative”, that they should only pay as they go. This is coming from a government that broke with its own traditions and ballooned the debt. Maybe its tradition is to balloon the debt as was done under Mulroney and others.
How can the Conservatives possibly attempt to make this the point of the dagger when arguing against the Liberals? Is the projected debt the Liberals are going to run not high enough, or is it—