Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member for her speech. It was well presented but I feel that somehow it lacked the kind of commitment that Canadians are looking for in terms of actual deficit reduction.
What I am driving at here is this. I do not believe in cutting for cutting's sake but it is time to be more realistic and to realize that spending $5 for every $4 we take in is going to eventually cause us to hit a wall.
When I hear the different concerns and particularly that of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, it presupposes that the only way one can look after those who do not have what they need is to give them a handout. We need to really seriously look at replacing handouts with work, with things that people can do for themselves, and expand the involvement of family and community in looking after needy people.
Instead of sending a dollar to Ottawa and having it eaten up by bureaucracy and administration and then getting 10 cents back to the person who needs it, we need to bring that more closely to the people.
I would like to know the member's response to this question. How can we be more efficient with the money that we are taking from the taxpayers in order to look after those needs? How amenable is she to making it more local, moving it to the provinces and indeed even down to the communities?