Mr. Chair, only an NDP member could talk about governments creating jobs. Actually, governments do not create jobs. Governments create the conditions that help encourage job creation by the private sector, but the private sector is not something the member for Burnaby—New Westminster would be particularly familiar with or supportive of. On the other hand, we do support the private sector.
We also support the accurate use of statistics. He is reaching back into the 1980s now to try to demonstrate that in the late 1980s, over 20 years, to 2008, family incomes have not done well. He ignores, of course, the recession at the beginning of the decade of the 1990s. He loves to not mention that happened then, distorting the numbers. He is enjoying the distortion, all right but it does not help Canadians very much.
If he looks at the cumulative growth of Canadian living standards from 2002 to the end of 2007 he will see a growth of 20%. One would think he would want that to be the way it is and it is the way it is. Canadian families know it is the way it is and that this has been a relatively good run. We are making it better by reducing taxes at the same time.
As I said to him, the data shows that 80% of the more than 750,000 net new jobs created in Canada have been as a result of a Conservative government being in office, and 80% are full time jobs and most of the jobs are in the service sector. We are not talking about McJobs, as they talked about. We are talking about financial services, which is probably something he is against as well.