I have to say, Mr. Pearson—and I thank you very much for your question—it isn't a vague thing. It's actually more about poverty reduction than anything else, as Lissa has said. It's really just moving forward on those things that we have failed to invest in.
With due respect, we cut in the mid-1990s. You know, it's often said that the poor bore the brunt of the costs of getting this country's fiscal house in order, and I have to repeat again and again, it was women who did it. It was women who primarily benefited from the programs that were cut. It's not women who primarily benefit from tax cuts.
We seem to have a lot of money to throw around. I have to remind you, we are the ninth largest economy on the surface of the planet, with a fraction of the population. That is, to me, an eye-popping number as an economist, that we're the ninth biggest economy. We're the only economy of the advanced industrial nations that enjoys fiscal surpluses. We have for the last 10 years, and as far as the eye can see, now that provincial levels of government are enjoying surpluses...and we don't seem to have enough money for a national housing project, which we know would make a material difference in women's lives.
Women have no place to go. The violence-against-women shelters are full. They are going to emergency shelters with their children, which is not a place for women and children to be.
It's imponderable to me. We are inviting immigrants to come. Where do they go? They go to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Where's the biggest housing crisis in this country? Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. We have no national policy. That's seen as something that cities should be doing. You can't do it without everybody rowing in the same direction. Cities do not have the resources to meet the needs of living conditions.
So housing, to me, would be the biggest thing you could do to make a material difference in women's lives, but it isn't a gender-specific thing. You know when you do tax incidence studies on the effect of tax cuts—you heard about this last week—that the primary beneficiaries of tax cuts are male. You can see that by just going through tax information. Where are women in the income registries? They're in the middle and at the bottom of the income spectrum. Who gets the lion's share of tax cuts? Those in the middle to the top. That's just the way it works.
So if you want to spend our surplus somehow in a way that invests in the future, housing would be number one, making sure that people have pathways to—