The focus of this meeting is the federal contribution to reduce poverty in Canada. It is obvious that the federal contribution is really associated with the worsening problem of poverty and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Governments have elected to use budget surpluses which, and I repeat myself here, were huge at a certain time, in order to reduce taxes. However, tax cuts do not give money to people who are too poor to pay them. Governments elected to inject a massive amount of money into the military budget, which grew by approximately 70% since 1995. However, the budget for the social programs of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation have remained the same. There has been no increase.
So, on the one hand, we have adopted policies to reduce the deficit—the government has withdrawn from social housing, there have been cutbacks in transfer payments to the provinces and to employment insurance, which contributed, among other things... And on the other hand, we have been very generous in giving tax cuts and deductions that profited the wealthy and big corporations. When we compare these measures, we should not be surprised that the OECD noted that Canada is one of the countries where the income gaps have increased the most.