Madam Speaker, I am pleased to respond to that. All Canadians need an answer.
The member is right. Our growth in Canada has been higher than the norm that was set out, the target that was set out, the standard that was set out in the finance minister's economic analysis. All of us on all sides of the House I believe are pleased that our growth has been this vigorous. It means we are creating more jobs. It means we have unemployment down from over 11 per cent when we took office to under 10 per cent now. This is very encouraging because the reason we have to meet deficit targets is not an abstract study. It is not just because we want the deficit down. It is because we want to help the economy that can create the jobs and the opportunities.
Offside right now in terms of the targets, in spite of excellent growth, the interest rates have gone much higher than we thought. That is the problem and that is one of the reasons we have to meet our targets and get them down. It is one of the main reasons we will.