Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When times are tight, you pay down your exposed debt, retool your expenses and seek ways to increase your revenues. When times are good, you invest and plan for growth with infrastructure and service enhancement. These should be the principles of a sound business plan or, in our case, a fiscally prudent government balance sheet. Sadly, this is not the case. Instead, we see our financial picture as one based on a Fiscal Responsibility Policy that doesn’t pass the smell test, yet this policy is touted and praised at every conceivable opportunity by our Minister of Finance.

Again, if one repeats the policy statement enough times, it must have some bearing of being truthful. At least this is what this Cabinet is instructed to do and does so faithfully.

However, there are some of us on this side of the House whose job it is to evaluate grand statements of claim and take the time to look at the numbers being brought forth into the public realm. One only has to look at statements made in the budget address, such as “We have a record of sound fiscal management as shown by our Aa1 credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service and debt servicing costs below 1 percent of revenues.”

I think I addressed the Moody’s part last week, so I wanted to hone in on the debt servicing issue today. Clearly, we have heard many times in the past week from the Minister of Finance of our servicing cost below 1 percent of revenues. Now, this sounds very impressive, yet has anyone asked for the government to prove this?

If I told you this number could be more like 1 percent under our debt servicing ability, we can sleep better at night knowing this, or should we? Thank you.