Madam Speaker, I was a city councillor in 2008 when the real estate industry triggered a collapse of not just the North American economy but in fact the global economy, which created a recession. I was also a city councillor when I watched the federal government propose a budget that did absolutely nothing to protect thousands of jobs and the production of new housing in the country. It was only when the opposition parties threatened to bring down the government that the former Harper government decided to act.
Would the member care to contrast the substantial delay, the proroguing of Parliament and the inadequate response from the Harper government to that recession, that economic crisis, which at the time was the deepest and darkest recession the country had faced since the Great Depression?
The Harper government refused to act, was bent into action by the opposition and then acted with measures almost too small to make a difference to save the jobs and the construction industry. We lost thousands of houses and thousands of jobs in that 2008 slow response.