Thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for your presentation. It really was enlightening to some of us.
I'm going to try to sum up some of the things that I've heard.
Page 2 of your presentation states that “In tandem, federal and provincial fiscal stimulus provided important further support to domestic demand, contributing significantly to Canadian economic growth through 2009 and 2010.”
I was glad to see that, because the NDP voted against the stimulus during that period.
Then, later, you said that it's now entirely appropriate to stop spending, yet here today the NDP is saying, “Spend”.
On the other things that you've commented on, I'm trying to figure out why the NDP and the government are on two sides of this economic page. When you talked about jobs in your presentation, again on page 2, you stated that Canada, thanks to things like Canada's economic action plan, “...has recovered all of the output and about 140% of the jobs lost during the recession”, yet the NDP continues to say that we should focus on creating jobs, something the economic action plan--which they voted against--was doing and is continuing to do as we move forward.
Then you said something very important. You said that trade diversification is at the heart of where growth will come from. We've seen our Prime Minister pursuing that and we've heard Minister Flaherty talking about trade in China. We have negotiated approximately 10 agreements. Given that we have just signed some last week, during the Brazil trip that the Prime Minister took, we have signed more than 10. We are negotiating 50 trade agreements. The Liberals only signed three over 13 years; we're only into our sixth year as government, so I think we're doing pretty well.
At the heart of that, you stated that a government can create an environment to allow the private sector to invest in growth and you pointed out how important it is to do that. Would you agree, sir, that things that we've done as a government, including implementing a hiring credit for businesses, lowering corporate tax rates, extending the accelerated capital cost allowance, and negotiating free trade agreements show that we're on the right track?