Mr. Speaker, the cumulative debt that Stephen Harper put on Canadians was in excess of $150 billion, billion with a capital B. When Stephen Harper took office, as I indicated earlier, he inherited a Liberal surplus of billions of dollars. I find it very difficult to appreciate advice on balancing budgets coming from the Conservative Party given its track record on the issue. The only governments that have ever balanced a budget in the last 30 or 40 years have actually been Liberal governments, consecutively, and that is the truth. It is difficult to answer a question about the need to balance budgets when the Conservatives, in particular Stephen Harper, never really experienced a balanced budget.
In the House of Commons on April 3rd, 2017. See this statement in context.