Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madame Demers asked in part a question I wanted to ask. You talked about the problem with governments and the mantra of smaller government and government not interfering in the lives of individuals. It seems to have been crammed down our collective throats quite audaciously in the last little while.
And it doesn't make sense, I quite agree with you. Government is there to fulfill the needs of the people within the country. It is not a business, it is not a corporation; it is the government of the people. So I thank you for that comment.
You also talked earlier about your fifth recommendation, that being that employers be compelled to pay employment insurance and CPP. In my riding, and I'm sure that this is universal across the country, we have more and more of these temporary agencies, and they hire older workers, women, the disabled--and they're there for three months and then they're thrown away and they have no access to employment insurance or benefits. And that's the whole point--that they can be discarded, and there's no conscience involved; there's no support system.
I want to come back to what Madame Demers said. She's quite right, the federal government absolutely has the ability to transfer money to the provinces to improve our health care system and extend universal health care. We could include home care, long-term care, and prescription drug care. If the federal government took its responsibilities seriously and moved in that direction, would it make the kind of difference we keep talking about? Would it be real for the people you are talking about?