Mr. Speaker, I would like to clear up a few rather disingenuous comments made by my colleague with respect to past history.
The truth is that the Mulroney government inherited a massive deficit from the Liberal government. The deficits it ran were solely due to interest payments. It actually had a balanced operations budget. When the Liberals took over after that, they continued massive spending only until they hit a debt wall. They then balanced the budget on the backs of massive health care cuts to Canadians and to our military. Therefore, that is not a record on which I would run. Our previous government then balanced the budget, including the increases to health care.
The member across the way made a comment about the election campaign and his government being “honest and frank” about the finances. The Liberals then broke their promise with respect to the deficit. The $3 billion home health care promise was broken. There is no money in the budget for that. They broke their promise that their tax cuts would be revenue neutral. They broke their promise on cutting taxes for small business.
How is that honest and frank?