Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague from the NDP while she was speaking about having a full employment strategy. The first thing that came to my mind is that government in general does not really create jobs. It in itself does not go out and hire everyone to work on the government payrolls. However the government creates a proper environment for job creation because the real engine of job creation is the private sector.
Frankly my head somehow was boiling and spinning at the same time. The member wants the government to stop fighting the mythical phantom of high inflation and to stop being obsessed with inflation. She thought that the government should have a full employment policy.
Suppose that inflation went above 3% or 4% and there was a downturn in the economy in two or three years and we begin to have the same problems we had in the 1980s of a high deficit, high debt loads, high inflation and high interest rates, is the member proposing that the government should hire all those people and put them on the public payroll?
I also want to say to my colleague that it is extremely important to put things into perspective. All of the economic indicators she is talking about are fair game. However, there are certain indicators that I as a member of Parliament totally disagree with.
For example, here in Canada we had a deficit. I want to congratulate the government for winning the war on the deficit. We used criteria that are very much different from the criteria being used by OECD members around the world.
When we talk about assets in Canada and somebody from the auditor general's office says that we have $50 billion in assets, in my view, Canadian assets are really in excess of $150 billion taking into consideration crown corporations and everything else the government owns in Canada.
We have to put things into perspective when we talk about shrinking wealth and economic indicators when comparing them with other countries around the world.
If the private sector does not really create the jobs she is asking for and the private sector is not meeting the target she is setting, is the member proposing that the government hire all those people who were not hired by the private sector?