Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to what the hon. member said. I have a bit of a problem with some of the comments he made vis-à-vis federal-provincial relations.
If the hon. member takes some time to read the program as outlined by the federal government, he will see that we have a very caring federal government which is reaching out to the provinces in a number of ways.
We have a federal proposal dealing with the management and planning of the labour market, a single window approach which I am sure the hon. member would like to support in the province of Quebec, to make our system more efficient and to avoid the waste and duplication that occur in various programs we deal with as federal and provincial governments.
On the issue of fiscal parameters, the hon. member should read that section once again. It is in the green paper. It is quite clear. We spoke about it in the last budget. The hon. member knows about the $2.4 billion that we cut from UI. That is in here. The government was elected on a commitment to reach 3 per cent of the GDP deficit reduction target. That is in this book.
We are being extremely upfront with Canadians. In reference to job creation, I find it quite ironic that we have created over 275,000 jobs. Nothing illustrates more the success of the government than what we have been able to do in the riding of the official opposition critic of human resources development. When she came into office in October the unemployment rate in her riding was 12.3 per cent. I am happy to report to the House of Commons that the unemployment rate in her riding is now 9.1 per cent. I do not hear members of the Bloc Quebecois congratulating us on such initiatives, and may I add that members on that side rise in the House day in and day out.
When we look at job growth the province of Quebec is number two in Canada. That speaks to the type of programs the government has initiated in bringing about what we refer to as positive change in the lives of the people of Quebec.
On the issue of the general philosophical thrust of the government, when we look at legislation that has gone through the House already; when we look at the fact that our Canada student loans legislation, which was approved by the House, has a section that deals with special opportunity grants for disabled Canadians, for women who are pursuing doctoral studies, for high need students, and for people who come from lower incomes; and when we look at the whole notion of deferred grants where students graduating with debt loads of $22,000 are seeing them reduced by $6,000 by the federal government, it speaks to the spirit in which we operate.
Let us also look at the unemployment insurance changes we made in the last budget. Low income unemployed Canadians with dependants are receiving the highest possible benefit rate of 60 per cent; 27,000 people have benefited from that change.
For the life of me I do not know where the hon. member has been in the past few months. We have moved very quickly since the October 25 election when we received an overwhelming mandate from the people of Canada on legislation that speaks to improving the quality of life of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, including those in the province of Quebec.