Mr. Speaker, first I would like to welcome the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party to the House of Commons. I am happy to have her here. I know she has waited a long time and I hope she will stay for a long time too.
I would like to say that we want to reduce unemployment and we are working very hard on it. In fact during the last 46 months the Canadian economy has created 975,000 new jobs. The level of unemployment went down from 11.5 per cent to 9 per cent but we have to keep working.
The first thing we had to do was to put the finances of the nation in order. A few years ago we had a deficit of $42 billion and very soon we will have reduced it to zero. We have to do that in order to create jobs. When there is no inflation, low interest rates and a competitive dollar, we can produce and be very competitive. It is in that way that we will create the jobs.