I do think that all economies need a sense of fiscal discipline especially over the midterm and if you are in the middle of a debt crisis you can't borrow your way out of a debt crisis. That's logically impossible.

Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada.

Paul Martin talks eloquently about defending national sovereignty but the reality hasn't matched the rhetoric. When it comes to the United States, Mr. Martin says he calls them as he sees them, but when it comes to American passage through Canada, he doesn't actually see anything.

It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.

My own views on abortion, I'm not on either pole of that and neither of the interest groups on either end of this issue would probably be comfortable with my views.

America, and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world.

I know economists will say well, we could run a small deficit but the problem is that once you cross that line as we see in the United States, nothing stops deficits from getting larger and larger and spiralling out of control.