Mr. Speaker, the member asked that we give speedy passage to this bill. I was thinking the reason he wanted the speedy passage was so the government could raise some more money from the money markets to keep itself in business. He may wish to refute that.
At election time this government ran on a platform of jobs, jobs, jobs. I am sure we all remember that great slogan people voted for: jobs, jobs, jobs.
The government introduced the infrastructure program in which it would use $6 billion of borrowed money in order to put Canadians to work. It sounded good. However the President of the Treasury Board was before one of the committees I sat on last year. I asked him to tell us how many jobs this $6 billion infrastructure program had created. He sheepishly said as far as he was aware it had created 8,000 permanent jobs. That is $6 billion of borrowed money in the taxpayers' name created 8,000 permanent jobs. Those are the figures of the President of the Treasury Board. They are not my figures.
We would have been far better off to put the money in the bank and give the interest to the people rather than putting them back to work. The interest would have worked out to about three-quarters of a million dollars per job created. The program did not work but we are now more in debt.
Just a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister rose in the House as we all know and he laid a heavy responsibility on the private sector by saying: "It is now up to you to create jobs, jobs, jobs because we are a miserable failure at it over on this side of the House".
I ask the member: What is this government going to do that will really provide meaningful, productive, creative jobs that people can be proud of and that they can be sure they will keep for the rest of their lives, rather than these temporary make work projects that are done on borrowed money?