Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt there is a connection between the participation rate and the unemployment levels reported by Statistics Canada.
This is why we talked mainly about job creation. The Prime Minister has said many times, and so have I, that since we came to power, we have created more than 790,000 jobs in the private sector alone, the vast majority of which were full-time jobs.
Even with last Friday's figures, if we consider the past five months, we created more than 70,000 jobs, most of them in the private sector, and these are full-time jobs, precisely for the reason mentioned by the hon. member. We must mention job creation, because the unemployment levels only tell us part of the story.