Mr. Speaker, I was interested in my hon. colleague's comments, particularly when he talked about the recession having started in 2009. If he were to check the history of this, he would find that it was the fall of 2008 when the recession actually started. This is of interest, since he can find articles from July 25, 2008 by Reuters and CBC talking about the fact that the country was in deficit. The Conservative government, which had inherited a huge surplus, put us in deficit by April 2008. That is well before the recession began. It is even way before his numbers, but it was certainly before the fall of 2008.
Second, the member talks about job creation numbers from July 2009. If he goes online, he can also find articles from the summer of 2009, even December 2009, when municipalities were complaining about how slow the federal government was to get money out for infrastructure under the stimulus plan. The budget was announced at the end of January 2009, but it was the budget for 2009-10, the budget for the year that started April 1. That money did not start rolling out until at least the fall or after that, so how can the member claim credit for job numbers in 2009?
What does the member think about the $2 billion increase in EI premiums on businesses and employers in the country?