There is one measurement of poverty that sticks out in my mind. In 1974, what a single welfare recipient received to live on was reduced from $254 to $100 a month, and it stayed that way for years. Today it has just recently gone up to about $290. If you measure that in constant dollar value, a single person on welfare was much better off in New Brunswick in 1974 than he or she is today.
Second, in terms of what to do about the situation involving people who suffer from not being able to mentally adjust to poverty, the state seems to be willing to spend a lot of money on what I call the psychosocial industry, and it deals with that situation rather than giving any money to the people. Really, anybody would go half nuts if they had to live on a welfare cheque for the rest of their lives, which is the way it seems. In New Brunswick, we say that when you're on welfare, well then, it's just farewell to you, because you're never going to get off it.
So really, the situation is whether the government is willing to commit to finance and money to help this situation. They've taken a lot out of employment insurance. You would think it's time to give some of that back. I think if a lot of money were spent and a lot of other programs were introduced, that would help to ensure people's ability to work. In New Brunswick, for example, we have a large construction industry, in proportion to other industries in New Brunswick. Decimating employment insurance here in New Brunswick was extremely difficult on people who owned businesses who were trying to keep things going, because they weren't able to keep their crews. If the crew was laid off for a while because there was a shortage of work because the person didn't have a whole lot of contracts, they knew that employment insurance would keep their crew around in the local area and they could get them back and make some money. One of the hardest things to do is to find a crew you can train and then keep.
In a lot of ways, governments, federal and provincial both, have failed to really have a kind of macro outlook as to what they are doing. They keep thinking it's just a little band-aid type of problem. As this gentleman just said here, now we've gotten to the point where we think if we put in some money to help people out, it would be an investment in terms of working more dollar value for the state. Indeed, it would be. It really would be the opportunity to do this on a large scale. You know, we're one of the richest countries in the world, and we happen to have a large problem with poverty. There are only three people per square mile. Do you mean to tell me that we can't keep these people productive and involved in society and fit and mentally healthy and eating proper food? What's happening? Are we allowing the whole infrastructure of this country to just disappear? That's the way it seems to be going.