Mr. Speaker, just a brief correction. What I said was “timely, targeted, and temporary”.
Absolutely, we had a clear plan to stimulate the economy at a time of great global economic uncertainty, and we came out of that. We came out of that with a balanced budget a year ahead of schedule.
Perhaps the hon. member and I would disagree about the record, but what is clear, and what he cannot walk away from, is the total absence of a Liberal position on this. The Liberals will at one time say we should have run bigger deficits. They will at other times say that it was terrible that we ran deficits. It is rather curious that they seem to think we should not have run deficits in the 2008-09 period and yet they think it is okay to run deficits now in spite of radically different economic circumstances. There were much more challenging circumstances at the time.
I understand that we are going to disagree on both sides of this House. However, I wish the government would have the courage of its convictions to actually take a position on this issue, one way or the other.