Mr. Speaker, let us all have a bit of a chuckle about what just happened. The member said, ”I want an answer to this question, but spare me the answer that I expect you to give.” I might as well just sit down, but maybe I will just give him that answer again so that he understands. Maybe after a few times he will actually learn something.
This is common sense, so it is good for the member to hear it. To fix the budget, we will bring in a dollar-for-dollar rule. That means when a dollar is spent that dollar needs to come from somewhere. The government needs to identify when it is making spending decisions. If it is proposing to spend $100 million on something over here, it needs to be able to say where that $100 million will come from. The money has to come from somewhere to go to the spending item. That is common sense.
What the NDP-Liberal government has pursued is a radical policy in defiance of common sense, where it seems to believe that it can promise new spending without ever offering an account of where that money came from. The effect of that has been massive inflation, making life significantly less affordable for Canadians, more than doubling the national debt. It is a horrible record, a record worse than any previous Conservative or Liberal prime minister.
Canadians are going to be living with the debt caused by the NDP-Liberal government for a very long time. However, we are prepared to use common sense to clean up the atrocious mess that it has created and restore our common home.