Madam Speaker, let me thank the minister for her statements and her emphasis on job creation and developing hope, especially for Canada's young.
Let me stress as she did the importance of job creation in our economy and let me ask her a question which flows primarily from the difference between words and action.
If we look at the research, we will now see that while an active social program policy is important in terms of training Canadians to be better equipped to take on the jobs that might be there, we also know that this active social program approach will in the main create just more skilled unemployed people, unless we do something on the job creation side. Nothing that we do on the social program side will do anything to create jobs for those people.
The minister will remember in the Red Book these words: "The Conservatives' single-minded fight against inflation resulted in a deep recession, three years without growth, declining incomes, sky-rocketing unemployment, a crisis in international payments and the highest combined set of government deficits in our history." The minister, along with others in the government, has said, "Judge us by our red book".
The minister will know that her government has appointed to the Bank of Canada a John Crow think-alike, Gordon Thiessen. This particular comment that I read was targeted for Mr. Crow. I think the statement in the Red Book is right. Appointing Mr. Thiessen, I think the minister will agree, will make it almost impossible to create jobs on anything like the scale needed to get those 3 million or 4 million Canadians back to work.
I wonder if the minister would like to comment on whether the Red Book was right or appointing Mr. Thiessen was right.