No, as some leaders of international organizations have said, Canada is actually a model. If some of the European countries could achieve the balance that Canada has, that would be ideal for those countries. We have some economic growth, even if it's only 2% real GDP. We have controlled government expenditures and reduced deficits, and we are working on the public debt. We have reduced the size of our deficit by more than half since the large deficit that we ran during the great recession. We ran a deficit of about $58 billion, and we're now down to less than half of that. Shortly, within the medium term, we'll be balanced again while fostering economic growth. It's a difficult balancing act that other countries would like to achieve.
On November 7th, 2012. See this statement in context.