Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member's riding very well, having spent a lot of time there as a business person before entering politics, and from training for an Ironman triathlon in the region, which feels like it was almost half a lifetime ago. It was certainly back in the days when I had more hair.
Moving on to other things, the member opposite raises an important issue. It is a whole-of-government preoccupation for us. I have had conversations with the Minister of Immigration on this. I think if we can set the table with 106% of jobs recovered since the lowest point in the pandemic, 154,000 jobs reported as added to the Canadian economy in the last month, and all of the hours that were lost during the pandemic having also been recovered. Those are important elements to put on the table as we get into the matter.
There is no more important economic policy for Canada today than finishing the fight against COVID. That also impacts who we are able to bring here and how we are able to address the labour shortage. I think Bill C-2 is an important piece of this puzzle, because it contains targeted business and income supports, including the emergency lockdown supports we need to fight omicron.
If we take a step back and look at when the crisis hit, our government rapidly rolled out a full range of effective broad-based programs to support Canadians through our greatest economic shock as a country since the Great Depression. These actions were necessary and unprecedented in our lifetime.
All across the country, these programs have been lifelines for workers and businesses. They protected millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of Canadian businesses through the worst of the pandemic.
However, those emergency measures were always meant to be around just long enough to help people get through the crisis. Fortunately, we are now moving into a new phase that promises to be very different from the dark days of our fight against COVID-19.
Thanks to one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, most businesses are safely reopening and employment is now exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
We know there are still workers and businesses whose livelihoods are being affected as a result of pandemic-related restrictions on their activity. That is why it is important to pivot to our support measures. It is a move to more targeted measures, which will provide help where it is needed most and continue to create jobs and growth while prudently managing government spending.
Some may wonder how we can tell when we have reached a turning point in Canada's economic recovery from the COVID recession. Allow me to highlight the markers of our government's successful economic response plan, which have brought us to where we are today.
In last year's throne speech, our government promised to create one million jobs, a goal we achieved in September of this year when Canada recovered all of the jobs lost at the lowest point of the COVID-19 recession. That is a total of three million jobs recovered since the spring of 2020.
Shops and businesses are open, and Canadians are doing their part to make sure we have a safe reopening. They are rolling up their sleeves, getting their shot and following public health advice. This is an important part of the overall plan to get Canadians back to work to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
We understand and appreciate the member opposite's concern, and we are working with a whole-of-government approach to address it.