Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of chatting about family, I will say that I was elected almost 20 years ago. My kids were 10 and six years old at the time I was elected. It has been a long time. A couple of weeks ago, my son celebrated his 30th birthday. I have talked about Jaden a lot in this place. My daughter, in a couple of weeks, is getting married. Time flies. There is a little bit of applause for our families back home.
What caused me to get involved in politics was a concern for Canada's economic or fiscal situation back then. Of course in the mid-2000s, there was the sponsorship scandal we were facing, but if we go back a little in time, there is a history lesson that I think is really important, which happened under a Liberal government.
After the budget, just recently, Fitch Ratings came out with a statement: “Canada’s...proposed budget, announced in Parliament on Nov. 4, underscores the erosion of the federal government’s finances.” It went on to say, “persistent fiscal expansion and a rising debt burden have weakened its credit profile and could increase rating pressure over the medium term.”
This has happened before, under a Liberal government. A generation earlier, under Trudeau the first, Liberal governments ran deficits in 14 out of 15 straight years. Fast-forward to the Mulroney era. A lot of Liberals on the other side like to point to the deficits of the Mulroney era, but I think it is very instructive in this conversation that the deficits of the Mulroney era were entirely interest on Trudeau's debt, the debt that Pierre Trudeau had run up over 14 out of 15 years. It was a crushing amount, and the interest costs alone created some of the biggest deficits in Canadian history.
In 1994, the Liberal government put forward a budget that did not go nearly far enough, and the ratings agencies and other financial experts were highly critical of that budget, to the point where, in the subsequent budget in 1995, the Liberal government of the day, the Chrétien-Martin government, had to cut 32% over two years from the health transfer and the social transfer; it was one transfer to the provinces back then that went to health, social services and education. We can imagine the ripple effect this had across the country.
We are going through a time like that now. We have just come out of Trudeau the second. We have come out of 10 straight deficits in 10 years under Justin Trudeau's government.
The current government came in and said it would be different. It called itself a new government, yet although the current Prime Minister promised he would get spending under control, the deficit in the most recent budget is infinitely higher and is substantially higher than what he promised in the election just six short months ago.
I am hoping that the hon. member across the way, the hon. parliamentary secretary, will stand up and explain to Canadians his concern for the future of all the valuable social programs here in Canada.