Thank you.
Mr. Chair, it was a broad question, as was suggested.
What we are saying is not that there shouldn't be payments on the debt or attention to taxation levels, but balanced with that should be the social deficit and the cost of what's happened over the last ten to fifteen years in terms of the various social programs and services that have been available. We have to adopt--we have to come to grips with the impact. We haven't really done that, so we need to balance that. That's where some of the things that have been suggested in terms of national dedicated funding for post-secondary education, Jeanne Fay's suggestion of a national strategy in terms of anti-poverty--we need to put in place some of the infrastructure, to use another term, that will help us address what has been a significant social deficit in terms of levels of poverty, levels of income, all of those. We need to develop those things together, and a budget process could help lead the way.
I have the experience of working on the alternative budget, both provincially and federally, which sets out a pretty clear vision of how to do things differently with the same amount of money. For several years, succeeding governments have apparently underestimated the amount of money available for social spending. That has to be taken into account as you set priorities for what can be done.