Mr. Speaker, I want to take my colleague to task for some of the revisionist history he has put forward here this evening. Canadians should pay close attention to some of the wording he has put forward. He has been careful to construct a theory about Conservative spending, Conservative legacies, and an approach to the economy that he talks about in terms of intergenerational justice.
Let us talk about intergenerational justice. Let us remind the member opposite that when the previous Liberal government achieved power in 1993, it inherited a massive annual deficit and a massive national debt. It took us two or three years to turn it around before delivering five successive surpluses and paying down tens of billions of dollars of national debt.
Cutting the previous government some slack, given the 2008 economic slowdown, which, by the way, accounted for so much of the decline in greenhouse gases, not any turning-the-corner plan the member was not here to defend, let us just look at Mr. Harper's Conservative approach to debt and deficits. He inherited a $13-billion surplus when he came to power. He ran a deficit every single year as Prime Minister of Canada and perhaps balanced the books in the last year by slashing spending. By the way, it is reminiscent of the old nightmare we have seen, from Reagan to Harris to Harper, and soon, to Trump: they borrow money, they slash taxes, they drive up the national debt, and they leave lingering deficits.