Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you back in the chair and to see all the friendly faces back in the confines. I am happy to be back.
I am more than happy to help the member with his history lesson as he takes us down memory lane from deficits past. If we are going to reach back, I think we should reach all the way back.
Let us go back to 1984, when the Conservatives led by the Prime Minister Mulroney took over and inherited a national debt of $120 billion. By the time he left in 1993, the national debt had gone up to $560 billion. Enter Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin in 1993, who were able to take on the tough questions, balance the books, and have successive surplus budgets. They brought the national debt down to $460 billion.
In came another Conservative government, and where did we end up? We ended up with $612 billion of accrued national debt under the Conservatives.
I think we have to be fair with Canadians. Successive Conservative governments have collected this huge amount of national debt and the Liberals have come in try to fix the mess they were left with. I think that is probably where we are now. We are going to give relief to many Canadians and we are going to attack the deficit.
Does he not agree that again it is left to the Liberals to mop up the mess?