Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.
I have a great deal of respect and esteem for my colleague, the leader of the second opposition in the House of Commons, particularly for the courage and resolve the NDP showed two and a half years ago when it told Canadian taxpayers, in a realistic and responsible manner, that budgets need to be balanced.
Many will recall the sad day when the Liberals promised the opposite. When I say “the sad day”, to clarify, I do believe in democracy and I respect the will of the people, but the reality is that those folks over there were elected on a promise to run a small $6-billion deficit, for example, in 2018 and magically return to a balanced budget in 2019. The reality is that the deficit is three times higher, and worse still, we have no idea when we will return to a balanced budget.
My question for the NDP parliamentary leader is this: what does he think of the deficit? More importantly, what does he think of those people who are now doing the opposite of what they promised they would do during the election?