Mr. Speaker, I am a little disappointed that the member did not address 80% of the motion, which is broken down into five areas. He did not talk about labour market arrangements with the provinces and the ways in which we can collaborate with our counterparts. He did not talk about the whole issue to do with our first nations people, the Kelowna accord, the research councils and the importance of research development and new technologies. He talked about philosophy.
The difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that we look at the investments down the road. We look at the things that build the foundation. The member may want to continue to repeat “13 years of inaction”, but unemployment is at a 30 year low and the labour participation rate is at a virtual all-time high. What did his government do to achieve that? It opposed those measures during those years. In spite of the Conservatives, we did it.
The member talked about setting up a special agency for credentials recognition. This is exactly what we do not need. We do not need to set up more bureaucracy to deal with that kind of problem.
Professionals in medicine, engineering and bio-sciences all have professional credentials, which are established by their own jurisdictional bodies. They have to be consulted and we have to be absolutely sure that the credentials base set, which has been developed over all those years, continues to be respected. The issue has to do with people who come to Canada and seek positions in those professions. They have to be dealt with at the point at which they apply for immigration, and that is where the problem is. We have a lot of people here now and we may want to deal with them. However, we have to deal with the problem when they come into the country, those who still look to Canada to automatically do it.
We do not need an agency to do that. Why does the member think we need an agency to do something that obviously has a solution, if the government would only take a decision?