Mr. Speaker, hearing the attempt by the official opposition to criticize the finance minister, I am standing here to speak of the great work he is doing. The finance minister has worked with various commissioners, and there is no wrongdoing. I mentioned this to a colleague earlier, from the old commercial from the 1980s: where is the beef? This is a fishing expedition and an attempt to undermine the credibility of the finance minister.
As I was stating, yesterday our government announced the intention to simplify the proposal to limit the ability of owners of private corporations to lower their personal income taxes by sprinkling their income to family members. We want to be very clear on this next point that the vast majority of private corporations will not be impacted by these sprinkling measures. Only an estimated 50,000 family-owned private businesses are sprinkling income. This represents only around 3% of privately controlled corporations. Again, we have a finance minister who is looking at what is best for the middle class. These are policies the previous government did not go after, policies that generally disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Canadians
In addition, our government announced that it will not be moving forward with proposed measures to limit access to the lifetime capital gains exemption.
As we continue to make progress, we will also continue to listen carefully to the submissions that have been received on these matters.
As I conclude my remarks, I want to assure my hon. colleagues of the finance minister's, and the government's, plan to grow and strengthen the middle class.
Job creation has been robust since we came to power, with 400,000 jobs created. Over the last 12 months, nearly 90% of the jobs created have been full-time positions. In the second quarter of this year, the economy grew by an impressively strong 4.5%. Over the last four quarters, our economy has had the fastest growth since early 2006. The Canadian economy is the fastest-growing economy in the G7 by a wide margin. A lot of that is thanks to the hard work of the finance minister. That is news Canadians can be happy about. It is great news.
The finance minister continues to work hard to create a healthy and growing economy in which businesses can generate good-paying jobs and where the middle class and those working hard to join it can have confidence that they will succeed.