Mr. Speaker, clearly some of the history has already been forgotten. When the Liberals came into power in 1993, there was over a $42 billion deficit. Canada was facing bankruptcy.
The cuts that had to be made were made, and the reinvestments were also made in the years that followed, to the point that the Liberal government was able to leave a $13 billion surplus for the current government, which it squandered away in its first three years and then started running a deficit.
In order to have a so-called balanced budget today, the Conservatives had to raid the contingency fund and anything else they possibly could to claim they had balanced the budget, finally, after nine years.