Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member speak, as I always do. It was interesting that he talked about the government doing little about the accumulated debt. As I think most people are aware in the House, we have made significant contributions toward paying down the debt over the last few years.
It was interesting he said that there should be more paid down on the debt and in the next breath he talked about not collecting as much tax and increasing massive defence expenditures, which of course would make the debt payment even less. He talked about spending more on air and sea lift, and tens of thousands of employees for the military. Once again they are incongruous concepts.
My question is related to the comment the member made on competitiveness and the very real challenge we have with our rising dollar, which was a good point. He said that with our rising dollars, companies needed to be better able to compete.
Where the member may have gone slightly astray though was in suggesting that the government had done nothing and had no plan. We have a very aggressive plan and policy in that area. One of the biggest initiatives of the government, present and new exciting initiatives, is the innovation agenda. It is split between two departments, the HRDC with the learning part of the agenda and the innovation part of the agenda in Industry Canada. The employees and government have worked very hard on having a very comprehensive program there.
The government has a plan to increase productivity to deal with such the situation of the dollar going up. What would the member's party plan be to deal with such a situation? What is its suggestion to make our companies more competitive to deal with the situation of the higher Canadian dollar?