Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of Finance. The government is so busy congratulating itself that its members will not admit they have screwed up. The fact is that Canadians are worse off today than they were at the beginning of the decade. There is more unemployment. There is more poverty. There are more personal bankruptcies. There are more families losing income.
Why does the government persist in its inflation obsession when its higher interest rate policy will cost $70 billion in lost economic growth over the next five years, condemning close to 1.5 million Canadians to continuing unemployment?