Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise today to tout our government's great work. What is disappointing is to hear the NDP, day in and day out, talk down Canada's economy with its nonstop negativity and misleading statistics. The NDP members know full well that Canada has the strongest economy in the G7, as noted time and time again by independent organizations like the IMF and OECD. These are independent international bodies.
If the member were more knowledgeable, he would know that Canada has posted the strongest growth in employment in the G7 by far over the past few years. In the past two months alone, Canada has created a whopping 140,000 jobs, the strongest two-month back-to-back monthly gains in employment in over 30 years. What is more, since July 2009 employment has increased by over 750,000 jobs. Of these jobs, nine out of ten positions created since July 2009 are full-time and over 80% of the jobs are in the private sector.
Contrary to what the members of the NDP might believe, investments made through Canada's economic action plan have provided significant support for jobs and growth across our country. It has helped promote economic stability for Canadians during the worst of the global recession. In the GTA, the infrastructure stimulus fund helped to create in my community a brand new college, new ambulance stations, new parks, new roads, new trails, new bicycle paths, a new library and a brand new state-of-the-art downtown core. These are lasting and critical infrastructure improvements for my community and jobs for our neighbours.
Economic action plan 2012 further advances our government's commitment to support job creation by small businesses, through measures such as the investing of $205 million to extend the temporary hiring credit for small businesses for one year. This credit would be available to approximately 536,000 employers. We would provide an additional $50 million to the youth employment strategy to assist more young people in gaining tangible skills and experience. We would improve labour market opportunities for Canadians with disabilities by investing $30 million in the opportunities fund and creating a panel on labour market opportunities for persons with disabilities, and prompting the involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises in shipbuilding projects.
We are also committed to introducing targeted common sense changes that are firmly focused on job creation.
To this end, economic action plan 2012 proposes providing $21 million to enhance the content and timeliness of the job and labour market information provided to Canadians searching for employment, investing $74 million to ensure that EI claimants benefit from accepting work and investing $387 million to align the calculation of EI benefit amounts with local labour market conditions.
If the NDP member is looking for more reliable reading material on our government's economic record, he should perhaps look up the following: for the fourth year in a row, the World Economic Forum rated Canada's banking system as the soundest; Forbes magazine ranks Canada as the number one place to invest and grow a business; and three credit rating agencies—Moody's, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's—have reaffirmed their top ratings for Canada.