Mr. Speaker, if we understand how the global economy works, how business works and how competition works, we realize that we cannot change the global economy, nor can we turn it backwards, but we can create the foundation for greater success.
The Liberal government put forward a number of great initiatives and took the leadership on something I and many of my colleagues are very passionate about, which is education. We looked toward making education a top priority and worked with the provinces to address the challenges of globalization. Education means creating a culture of lifelong learning and developing a program for older workers who are affected by change. We were working very well with the Quebec government at the time to analyze the effect of our older worker pilot program. It is unfortunate that all of that has been dropped to the wayside. We put forward the biggest investment that this country has seen in education over a decade. We were on the right track.
It is unfortunate that in the November economic update that was not allowed to continue to benefit Canadians. It would have benefited hundreds of thousands of young people and older workers.
We signed labour market partnership agreements with Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. We were having good discussions with Quebec to do the same thing. That would have brought much needed investment dollars to those provinces to address the challenges of globalization and ensure people had the skills and the opportunities to learn those skills so that at the end of the day we could keep jobs here in Canada and in Quebec, which is so important.