Madam Speaker, the Harper government was the worst government in Canadian history. Yes, the Conservatives cut and they slashed services, but they never balanced the budget. They slashed services to seniors, to veterans, to the most vulnerable. They would announce, “Oh, next year is going to be different. We're going to balance the budget.” However, they never did. They used sleight of hand; they tried to reconfigure the budget, but they had a deficit each and every year, sometimes an enormous one.
Now, for folks who want to check that, they can look at the fiscal period returns issued by the Ministry of Finance, which is surely not a hotbed of social democrats. The fiscal period returns have compared all governments, federal and provincial, over the course of the last 40 years. What those fiscal period returns tell us is that Conservatives and Liberals are woefully inadequate in managing money and paying down debt. However, the best administrations have been, uniformly over the last 40 years, NDP governments in the provinces, which have balanced budgets and paid down debt more than any other political party. Folks should not believe me; they should consult the fiscal period returns and see the proof.