Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member's question was serious.
The The New York Times article points out, and I think Canadians and our party would agree, that things are never perfect, that people can always do better, and always want to do better.
The point the member has missed is that our performance through a global economic recession was better than any other country in the G7. It is right that in challenging global economic circumstances, Canadians would be very conscious of it, one might even say worried about some of the things the member cited. However, that does not change the fact that our relative performance was very strong.
On the issue of deficits, and this is important, through the 10 years of Conservative government, we lowered the overall debt-to-GDP ratio, the economy grew, and there were stimulative deficits that were timely targeted and temporary during a certain period of time.
I did not say that I did not believe in Keynesian economics. I did not really answer that question one way or another. There are merits to a variety of these different ideas. However, the point I made was that the budget was not Keynesian, because Keynes' economic recommendation was for stimulus in times of recession, not for constant deficits. No serious economist would recommend constant deficit, because we eventually run out of other people's money. It just does not make sense.