Madam Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the member.
I must say that I read the member's opening address last weekend when I was taking a bus to Belleville, Ontario. I brought it to the House today because I was struck by the second last paragraph in which she said, on January 20:
Mr. Speaker, you can tell the Minister of Human Resources and Development that he can count on my unqualified support whenever he wants to help people in need, but I will make every effort to be as fierce a parliamentarian as he was in the opposition, whenever he deviates from this path.
I thought that was a most constructive and supportive statement.
Earlier in the member's speech she talked about the fact that there was inherent overlapping, duplication and consequential incapacity to make the right decision at the right moment for the maximization of social benefits. I thought this was just a great speech.
When the minister responsible for human resources addressed in a speech today some of the very things the member talked about in her opening remarks, did she not see that eliminating some of the duplication or overlap and flushing out some of the waste in institutionalized bureaucracy would allow us to have further resources at the same time to help put people back to work? Is that not the way she sees the debate unfolding?
I did not hear the minister talk today about cutting. The only deficit I heard him talk about today was the human deficit. That to me was the sense he was projecting. Could the member not try to see it as a possible approach of the minister?