Mr. Speaker, five years ago, this House took the solemn undertaking to fight against and eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. Since then, the number of children living in poverty has grown from a little under one million to nearly 1.3 million.
In its most recent report, the Canadian Council on Social Development criticized the reform the Minister of Human Resources Development is conducting. The Council considers that the minister's reform plan may well make child poverty worse because of cuts in assistance programs for poor families. Single-parent families, in which 41 per cent of poor children in Canada live, would be particularly hard hit by this reform.
The council has now joined the ranks of those who, like the Bloc Quebecois, object to any reform that cuts blindly into social programs. In his inaugural speech yesterday, the new Premier of Quebec expressed concern for the difficulties facing women and youth in particular, and we hope that the actions he will undertake will be aimed directly at fighting poverty.