Mr. Speaker, on behalf of all of us in the House, I would first like to welcome the leader of the Reform Party to the debate.
The fact is that had the leader of the Reform Party been paying attention, he would have noticed that right from the beginning when we took office we had a two track approach on the whole question of cleaning up the balance sheet. The first was certainly to get Canadians back to work. As a result of that, the Prime Minister embarked on several trips abroad with Team Canada which brought a great number of new jobs to this country. He would have also noticed that we extended concessional financing. We have invested in R and D. Through the Department of Human Resources Development we put money into summer jobs for students and re-entry jobs for students.
The fact is, in addition to the substantial interest rate decreases which have occurred as a result of this government's action, 750,000 new private sector jobs have been created since we took office. That indeed is something for Canadians to be proud of.