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OTTAWA Former finance minister Ralph Goodale gave an impassioned defence of the Liberals economic record Tuesday after recent attacks by the Harper Conservatives suggested that the party would plunge Canada back into spiralling deficits like those of the 1970s.

He kept the door open, however, to a new Trudeau governments running future deficits.

Speaking at a Canada 2020 event, Goodale, Canadas finance minister from 2003 to 2006, said current Finance Minister Joe Olivers recent remarkably bitter comments about Pierre Elliott Trudeaus economic record ignored the Conservatives own history.

[Oliver] forgot the OPEC oil crisis of that decade. He forgot [Progressive Conservative prime minister] John Diefenbaker's six consecutive deficits a decade earlier. He forgot that only one Conservative prime minister in the entire 20th century actually managed to balance a budget. That was Robert Borden, the year was 1912, and it lasted for just one year, Goodale told the Liberal-friendly crowd, many of whom have been waiting months to hear a similar speech.

More importantly, Mr. Oliver forgot that more than two-thirds of all the federal debt outstanding in Canada today can be attributed to the deficits accumulated by Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, Goodale said. Mr. Harper alone has added $4,400 in new Harper-debt for every man, woman and child in Canada.

Compare that, he said, with the Liberal record.

Goodale said when the Liberals came to power in 1993 after defeating Brian Mulroney, they inherited a $40 billion annual deficit and a debt ratio that was 70 per cent of GDP. Just serving that debt was sucking up fully one-third of all government revenues.

Within three years, Goodale said, the Liberals had eliminated the deficit, ushered in a decade of surplus budgets, paid down the debt and slashed the debt-ratio in half, cut taxes and safeguarded the banking system. He also said the Liberals had increased transfers to the provinces, although he glanced over the part where the Grits first slashed them.

Times were great, Goodale suggested. The economy was growing, millions of new jobs were created.

Fast forward to 2006, he said, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper inherited a $13 billion annual surplus. In less than three years, the country is back on the verge of deficits once again, Goodale said. That was before not because of the recession, which arrived in the latter part of 2008.

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Ralph Goodale Fires Back At Joe Oliver Over 'Bitter' Attacks On Pierre Trudeau