I'd just like to say thank you very much for your question.
Yes, it is disheartening for those of us who have been in the women's movement for decades to have lost the ground we've lost in the last couple of years.
That having been said, as our colleague from Australia has said, you can't do it just with institutions of expertise within government. You can't do it just with parliamentarians who are champions. You can't do it just with civil society. You need people everywhere to champion this stuff, and the expertise is never lost. We don't have the capacity in the NGO movement to do the work that you can do in treasury or in finance, as we are discussing. With a bit of luck, committees like this can actually push the process so that some of that work does get done where it properly belongs--at the heart of government.
But that's not enough, as our colleague from Australia has said. You need civil society pressure, and, frankly, even if we disappeared for the next 20 years, we have the touchstone of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to tell us what it is people need. People need freedom from fear and violence. People need access to an affordable place where they are safe--shelter. People need enough food. People need clean water. People need health and education. It's a very short list. We know what to do in order to do right by people; we know that when we spend new money, how we spend it makes a difference. This is not rocket science; it is not complex. Let us not fall into the trap of thinking it's complex.
Let us understand that it is actually not the complexity of poverty but actually the effrontery of poverty. In a country that is this blessed with so many resources economically and fiscally, can we not do something to make sure that everybody is an equal player, that everybody can run the race--men and women, children of both genders, immigrants as well as people who are born here?
There's no reason for us to not do better, so while I completely understand your frustration, I don't think the game is over. It is never over as long as there are people like you on this committee willing to take up the challenge on how to make it a vital part of political life.