Mr. Speaker, the prestigious bond rating agency known as Moody's has lowered Canada's foreign currency debt credit rating. Responding to the lowering of the rating, the Minister of Finance stated that the fundamental components of the Canadian economy are sound.
How can the Minister of Finance say that everything is fine when structural unemployment in Canada remains extremely high, when according to the OECD, the debt ratio of the Canadian public sector as a percentage of GDP increased by 82 per cent between 1985 and 1993, contrary to the average increase of only 21 per cent for all OECD countries?
It is not the current political situation in Quebec that is responsible for the repeated moves to lower the federal government's credit rating, but rather the sorry state of the federal government's finances, a situation which will not be resolved by the Liberal budget and one which has foreign investors worried.