Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on the Speech from the Throne, which outlines the objectives the government has for the coming years. We have to keep in mind that the real flesh, the real detail is in the budget. I will be concentrating my remarks on two areas, on competitive cities and on children and families, which are very important to the constituents of Oak Ridges.
It is extremely important to remember that the government is committed to balanced budgets or better; to disciplined spending; to a declining debt to GDP ratio; and fair and competitive taxes. We are not on the cusp of spending money we do not have. We are not in the process of doing the things that some colleagues on the other side would suggest we might do.
Fiscal responsibility is critical in any government. Having come out of that deep $42.5 billion debt that we saw over the years, the government does not intend to go back into it, no matter how much some members on the other side might suggest that we are going to do.
We need some strong fiscal anchors and we have them. For example, in Canada the GDP growth averaged 5.3% in the first half of this year. In the United States real GDP grew by 3.1%. With respect to employment, over the first eight months the Canadian economy grew by 386,000 new jobs, while U.S. employment remains down 40,000 jobs since December 2001.
On net foreign indebtedness, we are the only G-7 country paying down the national debt. We paid over $40 billion on the national debt over the last four years. This is something that is very important for members to keep in mind. The fact that Canada is the only G-7 state to be paying down the national debt at over $40 billion is a real accomplishment.
Canada's net foreign debt as a share of GDP is down to its lowest level since the 1950s, from a peak of 44% of the GDP in 1993 to 19% last year. In contrast, U.S. net foreign debt has been increasing since the early 1990s and recently surpassed the Canadian level.
Members should not take only my word for it; they should take it from the OECD. The OECD has come out with another report card. It indicates very clearly that Canada is doing extremely well in many fronts economically in terms of our openness to trade and in terms of our macro policies. We are a leader in the OECD, which is extremely important.