Madam Speaker, I just have a couple of comments to make.
The hon. member of the Reform Party was talking about jobs. He was criticizing the government for not creating enough jobs. I think the member's credibility is lacking very seriously.
Reform Party members have been in Parliament now for three years. For almost three years the word jobs never crossed their lips, never crossed their minds. Did we hear a word about jobs from the Reform Party in 1994? Not a word. Did we hear about jobs from the Reform Party in 1995? Not a word. It was not until this past summer that Reformers discovered the word jobs in the Reform Party vocabulary. Somebody put it there. I suspect what happened was that they read a survey or two or a poll and they discovered that Canadians are actually preoccupied with the issue of jobs. This is the party that talks about its members speaking to its constituents.
It took Reformers three years to discover the word jobs in their vocabulary. Where have they been for three years? Talk about a fresh start. That is the kind of fresh start we get from the Reform Party. It discovers that Canadians are actually concerned about jobs.
While they were somewhere in the wilderness, somewhere in the bush, not realizing that Canadians do have a concern about jobs, the government has been doing something. Since the government came to office, well over 600,000 jobs have been created.
One more thing. Now that Reformers have discovered that Canadians have a concern about jobs, what does the Reform Party propose as a response to that? It proposes a tax cut, right across the board. Do Reformers ever learn anything?
What did Ronald Reagan do in the United States when he came to power in the beginning of the 1980s? Across the board tax cuts. What happened? The deficit went right through the roof. The United States went from being the greatest creditor nation in 1980 to being the greatest debtor nation in the world in 1988. That is what Ronald Reagan did. The Americans suddenly realized that this trickle down theory of economics does not work.
But here is the Reform Party, true to its dinosaur heritage: "Yep, that's what we're proposing, across the board tax cuts". It did not work in the States and it will not work here in this country. Canadians do not believe in it and it will never work. That is why this member and all the members of the Reform Party have absolutely no credibility.