Mr. Speaker, I plead with the hon. Leader of the Opposition to read the budget carefully.
When he says there are no measures to create employment, I just mentioned a very important one which is by reducing the premiums on unemployment insurance there is a very substantial stimulus, especially for small business. That was the message from small business during the consultations: "You reduce the payroll taxes, we will create jobs".
At the same time we have reallocated expenditures to initiate a major infrastructure program across Canada of $6 billion.
In addition, to make sure we can establish brand new ways of getting people off social assistance, off dependency and back to work, we have added an extra $800 million in the budget to work with the provinces to establish a series of initiatives strategically placed across Canada to help the very people the hon. member says he is concerned about.
That seems to be a very big difference from the actions he took when he was in government which was simply to cut, slash and burn and do nothing to help those who needed help.