Mr. Speaker, the Canadian economy has performed reasonably well, because 757,000 new jobs were created since we came to power. Of course we would have liked to have more. However, in the circumstances, it is a very good performance because, as I have said on several occasions, this is a problem facing countries throughout the world. In Canada we have created more jobs than Germany, Italy and France combined, although the population of each these countries is much larger than ours.
We are not satisfied, however, and we feel we should keep working on it. However, we have put the government's financial house in order. The country's finances are in better shape than they have been for a long time. Our objective was to reduce the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP, and we are more than a year ahead of schedule. That is why today, people throughout the world are saying that Canada's example is the one to follow.