No, it is because it has one of the hottest economies in Canada.
By the way, it was the first province to have a balanced budget. My friend forgot to mention that fact, as well as the fact that it has the lowest unemployment in Canada. These are realities that my friend forgot to mention.
The member said that tax cuts create jobs. I remember Ronald Reagan saying that when he was president of the United States. He gave tax cuts to the rich. It was the trickle down idea. Give the tax cuts to the richest families in the United States and eventually the benefits would trickle down to the regular folks. Regular folks got sick of being trickled upon. That is what happened. Unemployment went up. The debt load went up. The economy went down. It was an economic disaster. Ronald Reagan bankrupted the United States. I will let the facts speak for themselves.
My friend asks if government can play a role in job creation. Yes it can. I will give my friend an example.
In the city of Kamloops we have a program, like many other communities across the country, called community futures. It is sponsored by the federal government. It is one of the few federal programs which I think really works well. Basically it provides support for individuals on employment insurance to create small businesses. It provides loans of up to $75,000 to entrepreneurs who want to start a small business.
In the city of Kamloops alone, using this microcredit arm of the federal government, 850 new businesses have been created. Normally each business has two or three employees. The odd one will have more. These small businesses are thriving. Every loan has been paid back. There have been 850 new businesses and about 1,500 new jobs created in the city of Kamloops alone.
That is something which the federal government has done and has done really well. People appreciate that. We should be expanding those kinds of programs so people do not have to go begging to the banks for the $50,000 loan to start their small enterprise. That is something the federal government could do. It is doing it now, but it could expand the program to create thousands and thousands of new businesses and job opportunities across the country.