Madam Speaker, the facts are these. Canada's unemployment rate is higher than that of the U.S., the U.K., Japan and Germany. Four out of the seven G7 countries have lower unemployment. Under the Prime Minister, unemployment in Canada has been higher than the G7 average every single year he has been in office.
Our growth right now is 0.3%. It is projected to be 50% lower than that in the United States of America. There is nothing to celebrate about the government's growth in employment numbers.
What we are asking for in this motion, and I have no doubt the government will support it, is the release of all documents in which officials foretold the potential of an economic downturn. Was the government at any point warned by its officials at finance or industry about the economic downturn that could eventually come and what impact such a downturn would have on the size of our deficit?
We want to know if the government anticipated any of these problems. We surely did. We are on the record regularly warning that troubles like this could eventually appear. It turns out winter has come, just as we said it would. We want to know if the government knew these risks existed, if it ignored the warnings and if it took any preparatory action to defend Canadians against its impact.