Mr. Speaker, I know the truth can hurt.
The reality is that if they take a look at the trade deficit, again something that I have raised in the past, the Conservatives will see that they inherited a multi-billion-dollar trade surplus and converted it into a multi-billion-dollar trade deficit. That is all about jobs and the impact it has on our middle class.
There was an interesting report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and a letter by Perrin Beatty, who is very well-known to the members opposite. I understand that he has served in Progressive Conservative governments in a ministerial capacity. There are a couple of things I want to make reference to.
In his letter, Mr. Beatty states that Canada is struggling to stay competitive and that in fact our country's ability to remain a leader among nations is stagnating. For the second consecutive year, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada 14th in global economic competitiveness, down two places from 2011 and five places from 2009.
The Prime Minister should be concerned when someone like Perrin Beatty indicates this. This is the bigger picture.
I love it when the government members stand up and cite stats and how well Canada is doing. That is why I think we need to look at the bigger picture. The Stats from the Conservative government often twist reality. The reality is that the information being given by the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and other ministers speaking on behalf of the PMO is in fact quite misleading.
This is coming from Mr. Beatty. Tourism is one of the greatest industries that we have. If one were to go province to province to province, one would find that they often talk about the importance of tourism. Tourism is of critical importance to many nations around the world. How is Canada doing on that particular front?
Again, we will go to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. These are the people the Conservatives often quote as endorsing their agenda. The chamber says, “Canada has slid from the seventh largest tourist destination in the world to the 18th.” That is the reality.
The tourism industry employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We can see very vividly, very clearly, how the government has dropped the ball. This could apply to different industries. I cite tourism because tourism is one of the industries around the world that is doing so much better in terms of economic development, but here in Canada we are not doing anywhere near as well as we could or should be doing.
I asked questions about infrastructure. The Liberal Party has been on this issue for a long time now. We need to be able to start investing in infrastructure in a very real and tangible way. We need to sit down with the different stakeholders, our municipalities, industry leaders, and provincial governments, to develop an infrastructure strategy that will allow for greater economic growth.
If we are prepared to invest today, at the end of the day we will end up seeing more economic development because we will have a sounder infrastructure. It is a whole lot easier, for example, to transport goods across our vast land if we have a sound infrastructure.
My time has gone by quickly, but there is so much more that I could talk about. The Kelowna accord, which had a vision for our indigenous people, was thrown out by the government. Child care programs and incentives were thrown out by the government. My colleagues and others have talked about the importance of affordable housing. It is critical. We have more young adults living at home, not because they necessarily want to, as much as parents may want them to stay, but because it is becoming the economic reality. There is no housing strategy.
We need stronger leadership from the government on so many points. If the Conservatives want ideas, they should have gone to the convention that we had, where over 3,000 people were participating—