Hillary Clinton's comments were built on the study that was reported on the front page of The New York Times, which we as a government were very quick to trumpet, which was the declaration that Canada has the strongest and healthiest middle class in the world.
But it's true, I think it's fair to say, not only on some of the items that you mentioned, like ending pay-to-pay billing in the wireless sector, or for example, anti-spam legislation, or the bringing into force of the Fairness at the Pumps Act, which we've done as well, or the drive for more competition in the wireless sector which puts more money in people's pockets, or even frankly, things like augmenting the universal child care benefits, that people have a little bit more money in their pockets to make choices about how they want to live their lives.
These policies, lassoed together, provide tremendous benefit to Canadian families. As you know, not including the new UCCB benefits that we're planning on bringing into force in the new year, the average Canadian family of four has $3,500 in their pockets which they didn't have prior to 2006. We're very proud of that. It's not one big national monumental policy that has arrived at that; it's a series of policies, which bit by bit shift government policy, to the benefit of the average Canadian family. It's principally, of course, middle-class families, those with kids, who have benefited from this suite of policies.
The Canadian economy in general, and by extension of that, average families....The greatest challenge the Canadian economy and all of us face is actually very simple and it's straightforward. It can be defined in one word and that's “complacency”. The assumption is that we will always have better, that we will always grow, that we will always have a better quality of life, and that everything will be fine in perpetuity. That is the greatest challenge that we have in Canada with our economy: complacency.
We have to ensure that we remain competitive, that we continue to grow, that we're establishing opportunity in world markets, that we're developing our resources in a responsible way, that we're managing the Canadian economy as effectively as we can, that we continue to consult, have our eyes open, be mindful of what the rest of the world is doing in auto policy and try to match it in a competitive way.
We have to be mindful that the rest of the world is catching up to us in aerospace and space policy. We have try to stay ahead of the curve and move forward. Complacency is the greatest challenge that we have. We need to make sure that we're vigilant.