Mr. Speaker, I have a problem with the minister's somewhat sweeping statements. When he says that more than 400,000 jobs were created across Canada, when he says that thousands of jobs were created in Quebec, he implies that it was all thanks to the federal government.
Last year, the federal government did not set up a single job creation program, with the exception of the infrastructures program, which is a program of temporary jobs. The government is just riding the wave of economic recovery. Jobs are being created and it says: Look at that, we created those jobs. This is entirely misleading. The federal government had nothing to do with it, and I think it is rather absurd that the minister should go around bragging that they created those jobs.
The government planned to create 45,000 temporary jobs through the infrastructures program and then turns around and cuts 45,000 jobs in the Public Service. I heard the minister say that only 3,000 jobs would be lost in the Outaouais. I hope he is right. We are going to keep tabs on those figures and the region will as well. We can only hope the cuts will not go over 3,000.
However, that does not deal with the real problem. The minister says he knows the Outaouais area well, but if he took a more active part in the activities of the Commission on the future of Quebec in this area, he would realize that his knowledge of the Outaouais is partisan and incomplete, since a number of people who appeared before this commission kept telling us-these are not my words-that the region's economy was dependent on the federal government.
The minister quoted some figures just now. He said that, at one time, one of every three jobs in the Outaouais was in the federal public service. It is now one out of five. With the cuts being made by the government, it may go eventually down to one out of ten. My point is that considering the economic dependence the federal government has artificially created in the Outaouais, is the federal government-and the minister did not answer this question-is the federal government prepared to offer financial compensation by investing in an economic diversification fund, to compensate for the number of jobs lost in the public service? To get back to the notorious question, if I can call it that, because it is more like, I will not use the word misleading, but a very-