Mr. Speaker, one of the consistent comments we get from the Conservative opposition is concern about the deficit. It is important to realize a bit of the history of deficits. When Stephen Harper was prime minister, he inherited a multi-billion dollar surplus and turned it into a multi-billion dollar deficit, even before the Canadian recession got under way. Year after year, the Harper government had nothing but deficit after deficit. In fact, I suspect we would find that the Harper government accumulated more in those annual deficits than in the history of any other prime minister, in terms of real dollars.
Given how disastrous the Harper government was in dealing with the deficit, why should any government take advice from a Conservative government that did so poorly and generated so little in terms of actual economic activity, especially compared to what we have done in the last couple of years?