Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to this amazing budget. Budget 2012, yet again, builds on the foundation that the government has worked to create over the last number of years to create a country that is the envy of most of the industrialized nations around the world. In fact, not only do we have some of the strongest growth and some of the best employment indicators, we are the envy in terms of our banking system.
We have the opportunity to build a budget of the future. We obviously have had great success under previous budgets in creating jobs, as has been indicated by many of my colleagues. Almost 700,000 net new jobs have been created. Leaders around the world are looking to Canada and wishing they had put in place those kinds of budgets for their countries, the kinds of budgets that have put Canadians in a really good position financially, securing their futures.
Of course, the opposition members have voted against those budgets time and time again. One would think that after making that many mistakes, they would not buy the same stock a fifth time. Therefore, we encourage the NDP members to look at the budget as the next step in Canada's prosperity.
The budget has more investments for science and technology and innovation that will create the positive job opportunities of the future. We have already done a great job creating jobs right now, as we can tell.
I know the NDP members voted against it. We are trying to encourage them to change their ways and understand the positive nature of creating, not only jobs today, but the good quality, high-paying jobs of tomorrow as well. That is what the budget is about.