Mr. Chair, I am pleased to take part in this exercise. It is a first for me. It is quite nice to be able to speak directly with the Minister of Finance.
First, I want to compliment the Minister of Finance on his French. It is always good to be able to speak both official languages and to do so as elegantly as the Minister of Finance does. I am talking about style, because in terms of content, we have major differences.
It has been almost 31 months since the current government was elected and the Minister of Finance was sworn in. Let us not forget that these people were elected on the following electoral promise, found on page 76 of the Liberal Party's electoral platform: “With the Liberal plan, the federal government will have a modest short-term deficit [for the first three years]”. Then, it concludes by saying, “return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019/20”.
That was a promise. In reality, the deficit is three times bigger than planned, and he has no idea when we will return to a balanced budget.
Earlier, the Minister of Finance was proud to say that he was ready to sign a copy of his budget. Is he ready to sign his electoral platform?