Let us take the G-7. Could it be Italy? Its growth rate is 1.2 per cent minus, no, not Italy. Is it France? Let us come up a little further now at 2 per cent, no. Is it the U.K. at 1.5 per cent? That is not what we are debating. Is it Germany at .8 per cent? No. Is it the great country of Japan? No. We are not even close to the top in economic performance. Oh no, it is not Japan. Is it the United States at 3.4 per cent? No, it is not. What country is it that we are doing the estimates on? Could it be that it is the country that has been judged by the OECD as being the richest country today in economic growth of all of the G-7 countries, the country of Canada? Is that what we are talking about today?
These figures are not from an organization in downtown Toronto or downtown Montreal. Where do these figures come from? Hon. members from the Reform and the Bloc should visit the parliamentary library and pick up the OECD Economic Outlook. Twenty-seven countries in the world whose job is to do what? They are representatives of 27 governments of the industrialized democracies of the world who discuss and attempt to co-ordinate their economic and social policies. What do they say? They say that Canada since the fall of 1993-what happened then? Wow, is that not a coincidence? Since the fall of 1993 to the beginning of 1996, for those three years Canada had the strongest employment growth of all of the G-7 countries. They did not stop there. Then they said for the year 1997 in terms of economic growth, Canada is projected to rank first among the G-7 countries.