Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to say that I will be splitting my time with the excellent member for Elmwood—Transcona. He will take the second portion of the 20 minutes allocated to us.
I was a financial administrator before I was elected to Parliament, so I am well versed in making sure that we balance budgets. I am proud to say that at many of the organizations I ran, we received awards for the work we did, including two business excellence awards. We always balanced our budgets and paid down debt, while at the same time ensuring that we were increasing the services we were offering to the population.
That is a good reason why I am a New Democrat. The NDP has a proud tradition of making sure that services are available for the population and at the same time balancing budgets. We can go right back to our founding leader, Tommy Douglas, who was voted the greatest Canadian in our history by Canadians a few years ago. He balanced budgets 17 consecutive times while creating a universal health care system. That was extremely important, because it shows that there can be sustainability in the environment and the economy and in the nation's finances.
What we are referencing in this motion is fiscal period returns. That is, as a number of speakers have referenced, really the book that indicates to us what the actual figures are. Anyone can make a budget speech; anyone can talk a good game. We have certainly seen this a number of times with Liberal and Conservative governments in the past.
The reality is that it is the fiscal period returns, the actual year-end accounting of the finances of a province or of a nation, that determine whether or not the finances were actually balanced.
I am pleased to say that the federal Department of Finance, which is surely not a hotbed of social democrats, for the last 25 years has been keeping track of governments in the fiscal period returns, whether Liberal or Conservative or NDP or other governments. It has been making sure that the public is aware of what the records are of those parties in balancing their budgets.
It will be no surprise that the worst party among the three parties represented as official parties here in the House is the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party, at either the provincial or federal level, actually has the worst record in balancing budgets.
Second worst, and only marginally ahead of it, is the Conservative Party.
I am pleased to say, because it is important that the public be aware of this information coming from the ministry of finance, that the best party in terms of balancing budgets, year in and year out, is the New Democratic Party. Our provincial administrations have the best record at balancing budgets and paying down debt.
We have done that while maintaining and enhancing services. We believe very strongly in making sure that there is sustainability in the nation's finances. That means we take positions of principle. For example, when workers pay into employment insurance, that employment insurance should be there when they need it.
As members know, only 40% of workers who are unemployed can access employment insurance. That is because of consecutive so-called reforms, first under the Liberals and then under the Conservatives. The people of this nation, the people who paid into the employment insurance fund, have been cut from accessing that insurance when they are unemployed.
An NDP government would not do that. An NDP government believes in making sure that there is sustainability in finances, but not at the cost of the workers.
When we look at what the Conservatives did in recent years, the same fiscal period returns that I mentioned earlier come up, and I begin to understand why the Conservatives moved this motion today.
The Conservatives began ringing up deficits in 2008. A total of $150 billion was added to our collective debt, a debt that all Canadians must pay. There were six consecutive deficits. Last year, there was a change. The Conservatives realized that the deficits reflected badly on their performance, so they dipped into the employment insurance fund and then sold the General Motors shares to create a temporary surplus that could be presented to the Canadian public just before the election.
It did not work. The public understood all too well that even though the sale of General Motors shares brought money into the government coffers, the government was actually ringing up an average monthly deficit of $400 million from the start of the fiscal year onwards. Even though the sale of the shares created a temporary surplus, this financial claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
When we examine the Conservatives' record, we understand very well why they are perhaps just as bad as the Liberals when it comes to financial management.
That brings us back to this motion. It is a little strange, I must say. We have a motion from the Conservatives that basically says that we should take half of the year and say we are in surplus.
If I had done that with any of the boards of directors I had to report to as the financial administrator and said that we were going to take half the year and say it were the whole year, that that would show the real year-end fiscal situation of our organization, I do not think any of the boards of directors would have taken it seriously.
However, that is what the Conservatives have done. They are taking half the year, with the special sale of GM shares, and are trying to say to the public that it means we are in surplus, even though we know that in an average month it was a $400-million deficit.
I wonder how that translates into other realms of life. If that is the Conservative approach on finances, that we take half a year and try to pretend it is a full year, could a hockey team pretend that half a season is a full season, that they made it to the playoffs because in the first half of the season they did pretty well, even though in the last half of the season they did not do so well? Or should it be half a game, rather than a whole game, or that we stop the game after a period and a half? What would that mean for the testing of our nation's students, if they could go into the classroom and say they will just take half a test because they know half of the material, and that doing so should be enough for them to get a full A for the full test?
It makes no sense at all, whether we are talking about testing, or hockey, or the nation's finances, to take half a year and say, “Let us pretend it's a full year?”
The reality when we look at the Conservative record—and people often vote Conservative because they are told that Conservatives may be better fiscal managers—of the last 10 years, where we suffered so much, in terms of health care cutbacks, and a whole range of other cuts that led to the deterioration in the quality of life of Canadians, there is no doubt that even on the fiscal front, the Conservative record, to say the least, is not admirable. There have been six consecutive deficits, with some of the largest deficits in Canadian history.
We believe that deficits should be applied prudently. When a deficit is used to jig the economy, that is something that could be appropriate. Six in a row, obviously, is not.
I hope my Conservative colleagues will not find me unkind when I say that after six consecutive deficits and after the problems that our nation's finances went through under the Conservative government, it may indicate to me that the Conservatives just were not ready to govern when they took office 10 years ago.