Madam Speaker, my colleague said at the end of her speech, “this is not necessarily the time for austerity”.
I am trying to understand what the government's working definition of “austerity” would be, because every day, every week, we see new expanded spending announcements push the deficit up higher and higher. At what point would that spending be too much?
If the government were spending a deficit of $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, at what point would the member say to hang on a second because we need to slow down that spending? If we were spending a little less than we are now, say, a $300-billion deficit instead of $343 billion, would that be austerity? Would spending $250 billion in deficit be considered austerity? Where are the actual cut-offs in terms of the member's concept of what would be too much spending, and what would qualify as austerity?