Mr. Speaker, absolutely not. While I appreciate the flowery words of confidence from the hon. minister from across the aisle, I can tell that they come with a forked tongue.
The reality is that we left the current government with a surplus, a $1-billion surplus. We did it not by putting it onto the backs of Canadians. We did it not by cutting transfer payments to the provinces. We did it by doing what we do well as Conservatives: we managed the economy. We paid down the debt in 2006 so that we could be ready for what happened in 2009. Jim said, very clearly, that the intention was that once we got to those surpluses, we would again go back and pay down the debt that was accumulated. We did not enter into deficits because we wanted to; we entered into deficits because we had to.
The members of the current government say that they want the government to go into deficit because money is cheap. Shame on them.