Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses.
It sort of amazes me that we talked about a plan where there were 35 federal department agencies, many programs that were developed through this, and it would seem to me that since 2009 there have been more than 600,000 jobs created. If you look to industrialized countries, I'm not so sure there are any that can actually say that, where they've come above where they were at the start of the recession.
I want to go back to the comment about how we evaluate this on a project-by-project basis. I'm going to be honest with you that I hope we don't. I'll give you an example. Whether it was in my riding in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex or others, you might have a transportation infrastructure program that actually created jobs at that time within our community, within the industry of the construction, to develop that. But we are now continuing to move ahead with trade agreements with countries, which means we're developing an infrastructure that will continue to grow, to use the development of our county's infrastructure, our commodities, and our primary resources. Those actual job creations are not just the one time to develop that, but actually it is a continuum that will create jobs, because that project is done, because we are developing trade, because of a number of things that are good for our community. So I guess my comment would be that I really hope we don't spend a lot of time trying to pinhole the projects, but let's look at this in a bigger context. Even though this was a temporary infusion in cooperation with provinces and territories and in fact municipalities, it was a temporary infusion that gives a global perspective for Canada that has been very successful.
I wouldn't mind asking Industry Canada just to follow up on those comments, because we did work with provinces and territories and municipalities. I'm wondering just how this was accomplished. Canada is a big place with different views, but it got accomplished for an end purpose, and I'm wondering if you can touch on that, either Mr. Dunlop from the Department of Industry or Mr. Sarantakis from Infrastructure Canada.