Mr. Speaker, it is my great privilege to address my colleague for the first time in the House. I want to congratulate her on her fortitude in staying here until this late hour. I know she has a family and it speaks to the courage of some of the women parliamentarians in the House.
At this point in time, especially with the debt crisis in Europe, it behooves our government to look at ways to ensure that our financial house is in order. We are doing so in large part with budget 2012 and part of the bill that we debating tonight, Bill C-38. The goal of the bill is to ensure balanced finances, while spurring job creation and economic growth. We have the made in Canada approach to ensuring the long-term prosperity of our country.
With that, we need to ensure that core services are still delivered and that the responsibilities of government are maintained and carried out. On my colleague's question about her specific riding and the tax centre therein, I am certainly not in a position to comment on rumours or speculation. However, our government will ensure that core services are delivered and that we are wise stewards of taxpayer funds.
She made some good comments about looking at job creation and ensuring long-term growth in the country. I would ask her to look at some of the policies we have put in place over the last few years since we became government. Since July of 2009, our economy has created over 760,000 net new jobs across the country, over 90% of which are full time and many of them in Quebec. It is that track record that we seek to improve upon, while delivering core services and ensuring the stability of our social program funding for Canada's long-term prosperity.