Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
I would like to correct one part of his preamble in that over 80 per cent of Canadians support the federal government's initiative to fundamentally redesign and restructure the social programs. One reason they do that is they recognize the best way to deal with the serious problem of child poverty, the serious problems families face and the high long term unemployment of older workers is to have contemporary programs that meet those needs where the funding goes toward the people who need it and not simply to those who administer it.
That is the objective of our reform: to get programs to meet needs, not simply to allow a number of programs to proliferate that do not really deal with the crucial issues facing us as we go into another century.