Well, I have to tell you, sir, I had an opportunity to read the speech of the Prime Minister at the FCM conference, because of course he attended with Minister Baird. To be clear, I don't think there's going to be any extension. I'll tell you why I don't think there's going to be any extension. It's not an issue of the money, sir. You've never seen more money come to Quebec, or the provinces, or the municipalities by any government in the history of this country. You've never seen that.
But clearly this is not about the money, not about the amount of money. It's about timing. It's about fairness. I hope the government is fair to the communities I represent, just as I hope they're fair and treat Quebec communities exactly the same. I think what we've seen with this stimulus funding is exactly what we wanted to see. We've seen an economy bounce back. We've seen 300,000 jobs created in the last eight months. We've seen the strongest economy in the world being Canada. So I think the infrastructure stimulus fund is working, and that's what it's there for. It's there to make sure that we don't have rapid depletion of the economy, which means jobs.
I do want to say this, sir. I have seen in my municipalities the funding of these projects come in 30% under what they expected it to be. So the actual reality is that even though I have the lowest unemployment rate in the country, being from Fort McMurray, the municipalities in my area are able to complete the projects on time because those are the ones they applied for. They applied for ones they could do. So I think that's very important to be fair to all the communities and to make sure that this infrastructure stimulus package, the funding itself for the stimulus money, which is a small portion of the economic plan, is actually spent to do exactly what it's there for, and that is to create stimulus, to create jobs, but only do so for a certain period of time.
Now, you remember over-inflation, don't you, in the 1980s, 18%, 24%?