Mr. Speaker, if empty rhetoric could create jobs, then the NDP would create full employment very rapidly.
This is nonsense. If the member opposite had listened to me he would know that I would not reject renewed social spending when there is a surplus. This is certainly one government which has a heart and a conscience.
The reality is the previous Conservative government overspent. It strangled the economy. That created unemployment. The way to correct that, the way to create jobs, is to allow the economy to create jobs.
The member opposite would create jobs out of a vacuum. It does not work that way. It works by having people in Canada who are actively creating employment taking risks, creating business. Sorry, I said business. Good lord, we should not say business to the NDP.
Medium and small businesses in this country, not big unions, are the ones that are driving this economy. They are fueling the growth of this economy which is growing faster than any other economy in the G-7. As a result of that, I believe in the last six months or so we have created some 240,000 jobs in this country.
It just shows that we have our fiscal house in order, fiscal not monetary. Monetary has to do with funny money going across borders. Germany experimented with that in the 1930s. It printed money. Actually the Social Credit in the west had similarly crazy theories during the 1930s. Oddly enough it was the father of the Leader of the Opposition who was very much involved in some of these weird theories coming from the west. All weird monetary theories came from the west, whether it was the NDP or the Social Credit, it was the cradle of this kind of thing.
I do not want to suggest that Ontario, Quebec, the maritimes and B.C. have anything exceptional to contribute as opposed to other parts of the country, but I do believe that certainly Ontario and I think now in the maritimes, even though they did elect a few NDP members, will agree that good fiscal policy, getting your house in order is the way to create jobs.