Mr. Speaker, it was not so long ago that I was talking about NDP economic policy. I used to use words like, “neanderthal”, “crazy” and “far left”, but I will confess that in the last little while, perhaps since the leadership of Jack Layton, its policies have become somewhat less neanderthal, somewhat less crazy, somewhat less far left and perhaps a little less crass.
I hope that my NDP colleagues will take those comments as a compliment, because that is how they were intended.
However, when I turn from the NDP to the Conservatives, I am afraid I will be a little harsher.
Perhaps before I do that, I should mention that the NDP motion makes a lot of sense and that the Liberals are happy to support it today.
As for the Conservatives, this triumphalist talk about the economic action plan, as if it has created every one of these 600,000 jobs, which is what the Minister of Finance said today in question period, “...the economic action plan which resulted in 600,000 jobs”.
Conservative parties usually have the motto “governments don't create jobs, the private sector creates jobs”. Here the Conservatives have put it on its head and claim responsibility that they have created every job. Does that mean that the Conservatives think that Canada's natural resources, the oil and metals in the ground that have helped our recovery, were created by the Conservative Party of Canada?
Do they think that the Conservative Party was behind Mr. Chrétien's measures in the 1990s?
Do the Conservatives think that Mr. Chrétien balanced the books and reduced the debt because of them? Do they think that Mr. Chrétien refused to deregulate banks and refused to allow bank mergers because of them, when they in fact were urging deregulation, which led to huge problems in the U.S. and the U.K?