Thanks, and welcome to this committee. It's the first time we've had the opportunity to work together.
These are really important questions. I think they're important because we need to be transparent with Canadians on how we're trying to manage the economy in a way that benefits Canadians today and puts us in a good position moving forward.
Of course, when we came into office in 2015, I know you'll remember what we were facing. We were facing a difficult situation. Oil prices were in the midst of going down significantly, and they continued to go down. In fact, they didn't reach their lowest point until significantly after we got into office. We've been in a sustained challenge in terms of that part of our economy for a while.
We came to the conclusion that what we needed to do was ensure that our economy remained resilient, which means that we had to continue to maintain our low debt-to-GDP ratio, which provided us with the resilience in terms of changes in the economy. That's why the Prime Minister put as my number one objective in this mandate to continue reducing that.
You mentioned the numbers. Obviously, the debt-to-GDP ratio has gone down since the Conservative government. It is lower today than it was when we came into office. That's not an assertion; that's just a fact. We intend on continuing to make sure that happens.
At the same time, we have a responsibility to Canadians. The fact that we've been able to reduce unemployment to pretty much the lowest level—certainly the lowest that you and I have seen in our lifetimes—is hugely important. We have people working. That's not only really great for them and their families; it's great for our economy. The low level of unemployment is leading to wage increases. Of course, both of those things together mean that our economy continues to grow.
We will continue to make sure that our balance sheet is strong, which we've done. We will continue to work around that particular measure you brought up, the debt-to-GDP ratio, to reduce that over time, because we know that we need to be prepared for any challenges.
If we look around the world, we realize there are challenges, some that we understand and some that might be around the corner. That's why we need to keep a resilient—