Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech by my colleague very much, but he made one error that I want to point out. He indicated that a favourite activity in the Penticton area is floating down the river on tubes, and that is fun. In fact, my wife and I are very much looking forward to taking our grandkids on that trip because it will be a lot of fun.
However, I have a brother who lives in the Okanagan and I go there most summers for a week's holiday. We have another favourite activity, which is probably favoured by more people than floating down the river, and that of course is a wine tour and drinking wine. That is a wonderful activity. There are some terrific vineyards in his area. They are a wonderful part of the history of the area and have really brought the quality of Canadian wine up quite remarkably.
I am delighted to be speaking on this bill today and I want to remind people of exactly what this bill entails. It is the second part of the budget implementation act. The budget was passed last spring, but generally budgets deal with a lot of different issues, as that budget did. There was one large bill implementing part of the budget and there were complaints about it being so large, but we are doing a lot. We are doing a lot because, quite frankly, it is needed. The world is in very difficult economic times. In Europe things are in a terrible mess and I worry about the future of the United States. Canada has fared much better, but we cannot take it for granted that this positive momentum is going to continue because the world is in a serious economic downturn and at some point we certainly could be affected.
The government is taking a proactive approach. We are doing what we can to ensure that the positive forward movement will continue. We have been successful with a lot of what we have done. For example, since 2009 the good business people and citizens of our country, with the framework that the government has helped put in place, have created some 820,000, mostly full-time, good jobs.