Madam Speaker, in this case it comes down to this. If there are people who are disadvantaged in society how are we to ensure to the maximum that they will cease to be disadvantaged, that they will as individuals, which I stressed in my talk about Liberal principles, have the best possible chance of access to jobs?
I do not discount what the hon. member said about the virtue of community and the importance of individual initiative or community initiative or company initiative. I do not discount that in the slightest. It is a crucial part of the social fabric of the country. I do not think it is only the role of government to do that.
What worries me in that analysis is what happens to the people who are not the neighbour at our gate. What happens to the people who are the strangers in our streets? In the case of aboriginals, many of them are. Look at our large urban cities. Look at who those people are and how disconnected they are from our neighbourhoods and our families and our communities.
If it is not society acting through its state, working with its partners, the private sector and communities, that will take care of those people in some kind of fairly systematic way, then not only will we be an unkind and uncaring society, we will be an inefficient society. We will be forced to use more of our resources for security guards and prisons and deal with people who drop out of schools and all the rest of it.
It is in everybody's interest to behave in a collective manner and to recognize the potentially positive role of government in doing that. We are not saying government is any better than the private sector or individuals or anything else like that. We are simply saying it is no worse. I say this as an economic historian. Its track record in worrying about the betterment of humankind is considerably better over time than that of the business community.