Mr. Speaker, it saddens me to hear a serious topic like the issue of Canada's productivity challenge distorted by the Leader of the Opposition in this way.
I wish he would read the speech. I wish he would quote a few other parts of it. For example, the federal deficit stood at $42 billion in 1993 and now it is the first budgetary surplus in 28 years. Our inflation rate has been the lowest in more than a generation. In 1998, 453,000 jobs were created. Canada experienced a bounce back in productivity in 1997. In 1994 we ranked twentieth in the world economic forum's competitiveness rankings and now we rank fifth.