Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First I want to give my condolences to Mr. Sanger and his membership on their loss. It's very sad.
I believe we are at a crossroads in facing some really tough choices in this country. There is money. Despite the fact that we have a deficit, there is money. If we look at some of the money that is available, there is $16 billion for jets, without any guarantees for Canadian jobs at this point. That contract doesn't give us any guarantees. There is $10 billion for prisons; the crime rate in this country is not going up.
There is $6 billion in corporate taxation cuts. Mr. Sanger, you just pointed out that tax cuts don't really create jobs. Canada's corporate taxes are the lowest in the world anyway, so we really don't have to go there. I'm not even going to mention the $1.3 billion that was spent on the G-20.
So we do have money, but we have to make some choices.
Mr. Jackson, my question to you would be on the choices. Pensions, which you've already mentioned, would be a choice. It would seem to be a major one that I would think we would need to look at.
Family care certainly includes looking after caregiving for families who have members of the family who are not well. But there is also child care. These families need those kinds of assistance to be able to be in the labour force and to stay in the labour force.
Learning is huge, in order to make sure we have the skills the economy needs.
And there is investing in jobs, investing in companies, to create the jobs of tomorrow: the green jobs, the retooling of companies.
These are areas that in my humble opinion are huge, and there are choices there that we have to make.
I'm looking to both of you to ask what your choices would be. What side of this ledger--and you may have others--would you choose? It seems to me that the issue is not that we don't have the funds; it's what choices we are making and where the will is to do it.