Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed working with the hon. member on the finance committee.
He points to a very important matter and I referenced it in some of my last comments. Not only do we have to understand and look at the things that Canadians need, but we have to unfortunately look outside our nation to the other people who have an influence on our current situation. What we find is that if the foreign markets are comfortable with us, if they are confident that what we say is what we mean and it is what we are going to do, then they back off and leave us alone a little.
We have worked very hard to indicate very clearly to the outside world that we are committed to price stability. Thank goodness we have been able to maintain inflation at very low and sometimes negative rates. That helps us in dealing with outside responsibility.
The other thing we have to do is be absolutely clear on what our strategy is. We have been. Our strategy has been to say that we will get the deficit to GDP ratio down to 3 per cent come-excuse my French but the minister said it-hell or high water.
If the minister can confirm that and make sure that is our strategy and that we do not waiver from it, the confidence it creates outside the nation is extremely helpful to us. That is because it has been difficult for us to have the best economic growth in the world, to have inflation managed efficiently, to have unemployment reduced significantly.
I expect after the implementation of our next budget it will again be clear to the markets that we are committed to this, that we mean what we say and that we will do what we say we are going to do.