I very much appreciate the civic-spiritedness of my colleague from the Chamber of Commerce in coming out and giving recommendations. I do lament somewhat that his recommendations completely ignore that we are at a 55-year low in terms of looking at the rate of our social spending relative to GDP. Fifty-five years--that was in 1950, and that was no heyday in terms of social spending in a welfare state.
When we recognize where we are today relative to that period 55 years ago, it's time for us to recognize that we're not sound economic stewards of our economy only by maintaining taxes at a very low level or by paying down the debt or what not, when we're already leading the G8; being a sound economic steward of our economy means making strategic investments. An early learning and child care program that would be developed in provinces across the country is one such strategic investment, because even the most conservative cost-benefit analyses show that it will pay dividends.