14 September 2013
Vancouver, British Columbia
Thank you, James.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I want to thank everyone for coming, most particularly, obviously, my colleagues, James, Minister of Industry.
James Moore has already introduced himself, and I’m also joined by Alice Wong, Minister for Seniors, by Wai Young, Member of Parliament, and by Nina Grewal, long-time Member of Parliament.
And for those who don’t know, we have here with us journalists from a wide variety of media outlets representing a wide variety of cultural communities in the lower mainland region.
This is, of course, events like this, and a group like this is a reflection of Canada’s strength and diversity.
As I’ve said, here and around the world, there is probably no country where there is greater cultural diversity, and at the same time, equally great harmony as you have in Canada, and that is something we’re recognized for around the world.
The communities you report to and that you broadcast to are an integral part of Canadian society, therefore your organizations are, in our mind, a vital and important part of the Canadian media landscape, which is why we do events like this from time to time.
You help new Canadians to be informed about national public affairs at the same time as you would keep them in touch with home and ancestral countries.
And you help ensure that the views of all communities are heard, which obviously is part of what makes Canada among the strongest practitioners of free speech and free press anywhere in the world.
James mentioned we’re moving towards a new Parliamentary session.
Obviously we will be moving forward with significant legislation.
I do want to say, though, and it’s important to state that our fundamental priorities as a government will not change.
We are committed to supporting families, communities throughout British Columbia and Canada, and we will remain focused, most importantly, on the economy, on creating jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity for every part of the country, and every community in the country.
We want to continue to lead the global recovery.
I think as you know, Canadian economy has, over the past – I guess it’s really over four years of what’s called the global recovery now, we have led much of the developed world in terms of economic growth, and particularly in terms of job creation.
We have one million net new jobs created in Canada.
Over one million net new jobs created in Canada since the end of the recession.
More people are working today in Canada than are ever been working before in our country, and we are one of the very few developed countries that can actually make that statement.
We have the strongest, safest financial system in the world, which we’re building on.
We’re taking great efforts, as you know, to widen our trade networks.
Some of you have been on some of my trips that involve that.
And of course, we’re also remaining on track to balance our budget by 2015, which was a key election commitment.
All those things said, the reason we have this focus on the economy is not because things are exactly where we want them to be.
On the contrary, things remain challenging, and they’re challenging in the world around us.
We’re part of a global economy, and we’re a trade-dependent nation, so we have to keep focused as a government and a country on these matters.
We will continue with our, obviously our very broad approaches.
We will keep taxes down for families, for individuals, and for businesses.
We’ve lowered many critical taxes.
We’re committed to keeping them down.
We’re committed to taking strong action to make our streets and communities safe, to further our emphasis on a criminal justice system that focuses on the rights of victims and law abiding citizens rather than on the rights of criminals, as was done in the past.
We will also keep reforming our immigration system.
As you know, we inherited a system where we were locked into enormous, large scale backlogs.
We’ve been dealing with that, and as we deal with that, try and clear those backlogs, and try and make it easier, particularly for those who can get and create jobs to enter Canada.
We will also continue to target some of the specific economic challenges, which we did in Economic Action Plan 2013, things like manufacturing, innovation, and mismatches between jobs and skills in the workforce.
So those, broadly speaking, are the priorities we’ve had as a government.
They’re going to broadly remain the priorities, but obviously we’ll be coming forward with detailed legislation along those lines, and in the meantime, I just want to assure you we’re committed to getting results for all of your communities and all of our families, and I’m here to take a few questions on anything, any of these matters, or anything else that may be of interest to you.
So, thanks, everyone, for being here.
We really do appreciate your time.
Thanks.
