Mr. Speaker, we have to look beyond the job creation numbers. On a political level, the Conservatives are telling us not to look at the polls but at what is happening on the ground. However, when we see statistics on the unemployment rate, we have to be equally careful not to always accept the figures we are given as gospel truth, since determining the unemployment rate and conducting political polls are done by a similar process and methodology.
Indeed, jobs have been created, but what kind of jobs? We have to make a distinction between the manufacturing world in Quebec and that in the rest of Canada. It is absolutely not the same thing. They do not compare. Quebec's economic growth is largely geared toward exports. The manufacturing world is rather seriously affected by the Conservative government's international trade policies.
In my opinion, the ease with which the Conservative government enters into free trade agreements with other countries, without really weighing the consequences to the manufacturing industry, causes significant job losses: since 2003, almost 130,000 jobs have been lost in manufacturing. These jobs may have been replaced, but not with jobs of the same quality with the same income for the workers. We see more workers slipping into poverty.
In our society we look at the unemployment rate from time to time and we say that everything is going well since the rate is steady or going down. Nevertheless, people are getting poorer. We have to do everything we can to try to keep our manufacturing jobs. We have to invest in research and development. We have to encourage innovation and not just settle for creating indirect service jobs that often pay minimum wage. We have lost a great deal of good salaries that helped people get out of poverty, a poverty they are quietly slipping back into with Canada's trade policies.