Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague for his question, which I was awaiting impatiently.
If I may, I would like to go back a bit and remind him that in 1997, when the Liberals came to power, we had had deficits. Finance minister Martin, whom I can name, since it is in the past, was able to pay off $81 billion. With the Liberals, when it comes to paying off deficits, we apply the Keynesian method. When things are going well, we pay it off. When things are not going so well, Keynes says we have to spend. It is important to keep in mind that during the last election campaign, we were in a recession, and Keynes, I repeat, says that we have to spend when that is the case.
We should also keep in mind perhaps that after the era of Liberal finance minister Martin, we had an average deficit of $20 billion under the Conservative government, as the Green Party member pointed out earlier. That is a great deal of money. After that, we had a so-called balanced budget. However, we see that we ended the year with a $16-billion deficit. It is important to remember that to achieve the so-called balanced budget, the government took $3 billion from the reserve fund and sold off the GM shares at the fire sale price of $2.5 billion.
There are no lessons to be learned. We have a plan to create long-term economic growth and pay off the deficit when the economy is back on its feet. We have given ourselves the tools to do so.