Mr. Speaker, I just saw another Reform Party member who wanted to rise after the previous speaker, so I thought I should rise as well to straighten out a few facts.
You may have noticed that the hon. member who just spoke was not altogether objective in his comments and was not altogether fair in the way he described the facts as we know them. And I am being generous, always abiding by the rules of this House.
I do not know why, but I kept thinking when I listened to the hon. member who just spoke about the words of Sir Winston Churchill. They have been ruled parliamentary by countless Speakers, so I guess I can repeat them in this honourable House.
He said about remarks which were similar to the ones we have just heard that the opposite to the truth had never been stated with greater accuracy. That is exactly what I thought when the hon. member spoke about the last budget of this government, this Prime Minister and this very excellent Minister of Finance.
Let us straighten out the facts before we go too much further. The member opposite talked about unemployment.
My position is that as long as there is a single person in my riding who is unemployed, there is too much unemployment. It would be a mistake to be satisfied with the unemployment rate, whatever it happens to be.
That being said, we still have to state the facts. Last month, 61,000 jobs were created in this country. This is a total of 800,000 jobs since the last election. A net gain of 800,000 jobs is quite an achievement.
Mr. Speaker, as the soul of objectivity in this House, you will have to admit that. Those are the facts, and I am sure this information is correct, since it was authenticated by Statistics Canada and other agencies.
The G7, the OECD and think tanks all over have acknowledged that the largest level of growth of any OECD nation this year will belong to Canada. It is not average growth. It is not a better than average growth. Only the best belongs to Canada. We are the best.
Of course it is not good enough to be the best, but it is a darned sight better than it would be under a Reform government. Heaven forbid that we would ever have such a thing in this country. That is not likely to happen at any time, let alone soon.
The hon. member opposite just argued in favour of high interest rates. I found it hard to understand the logic of what the hon. member said, when he stated that people on low incomes would benefit from higher interest rates. I would like to know what school of economics launched that idea. Did you ever hear about people on low and fixed incomes who benefit from high interest rates, considering that high interest rates are usually accompanied by similar levels of inflation?
How many poor people end up better off with inflation? The member across the way says that poor people are better off with high interest rates. I wonder which one of his rich friends taught him that. Which one of his rich friends is trying to invest money on the backs of those same poor people?