Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do want to reiterate what the other committee members have said and express our sincere appreciation both for your courage to come here and for the service your husbands provided to our country.
I have a lot of mixed directions here and feelings, because you're advocating on a very emotional level.
Madam Bartlett, I can totally identify with your situation, with your daughter having been born with disabilities. I've spent approximately half my life working with people with disabilities. My son was also born with disabilities and has suffered from cancer and has conditions that are undiagnosed in that no one is able to tell exactly why he is the way he his. Doctors are still experimenting. You're absolutely right.
In my community of Brantford, Ontario, there's an organization called Lansdowne Children's Centre, which serves over 3,000 families that have children with disabilities ranging from mild autism right through to multiple disabilities. Without exception, every one of those parents wants to know the reasons these things happened to their child. For the most part there are no answers, so I can identify with your frustration. I can identify with your situation, and I can identify with those of you who have lost loved ones, because that is part of the culture I have been involved with for a long time.
I bring that to you as the frame of reference for my comments and my desire for you to make comments back, because I don't think I'm going to lead into any specific question.
One comment has been made here and I'd like to know exactly what it means. I'm a new parliamentarian. I was elected just over a year ago, and I was not really involved in politics much before that, by the way. The comment was “you were human first before you came into politics”. I'd just like to know what that means.