Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if that was a question or a comment.
I enjoy the opportunity to answer my colleague's presentation. He talks about the Canadian family. I am talking about Canadian families, the root of our society.
I would like to reflect on what has happened in the last 20 years to Canadian families. In that time, especially in the last five years, youth violence has more than doubled. Real income, the amount of money a family has to support itself with, has dropped by some 6.5 per cent in the last five or six years because of taxation, because of government overspending and because of fiscal policies that are putting tremendous pressures on the people that are trying to hold this nation together.
Consider suicide rates. We have the third highest suicide rate among male youth in the world. The divorce rate has increased 10 times in the last 35 years and we are shuffling the chairs around on the deck saying: "We'll spend more money".
What are the priorities of Canadians? Is it their priority to find out what government can do or what they can do in job creation? We want to put the tools in the hands of Canadians so they can create the jobs. It is not what government can do, it is what Canadians can do. Government priorities should not be prompted by special interest groups, but what Canadian priorities are.
The Canadian priorities are that their families be strengthened and that they be given the instruments to create their own future. That is exactly what the government's fiscal policies, justice policies and social policies are stripping away from those families. I put that to the hon. member who made the comments.