Madam Speaker, I can appreciate some very basic things within economics, such as money supply. However, what we need to recognize is that if the government had not borrowed much of the money that was borrowed, we would have had Canadians borrowing more money to pay bills and buy groceries. There would have been far more bankruptcies. The people who would have benefited the most would have likely been institutions such as banks. What impact would that have had on things such as interest rates?
I studied the economy, but I am not an economist. Having been a parliamentarian for 30 years and having listened to many budgets, I have a basic understanding of how an economy works. The government needed to get involved and we did that. Over my 30 years, I have seen even Progressive Conservative governments recognize that there are times when there is a need for the government to get involved.