Mr. Speaker, we have heard about trade deficits and trade surpluses and about what they did and what we have done. We were told many times that there was a great balance between trade surpluses and trade deficits. They all create jobs. We want to remember that this is about creating jobs.
I will take a different analogy. Why, when we were in government during the greatest recession since the Great Depression, did we have a trade deficit? The Government of Canada of that day, the Conservative Party of Canada, dealt with the economy in such a strong manner that the people in Canada had the resources to buy from those countries because we still had the money in our pockets. Those countries that went through the recession did not have the money to buy what we had in Canada. On the plus side, Canadians did well in respect to other countries. In fact, that is likely the main reason why we had a deficit in exports as compared to a surplus.