Mr. Speaker, the living conditions of the very poorest in Canada are worse now than in a very long time. The numbers of the homeless continue to rise and the line-ups at food banks grow longer. Aboriginals living on reserves are often living in third world conditions. After tax incomes remain well below individual incomes of the 1980s.
Next week several Canadian anti-poverty groups are visiting the United Nations to point out that for too many Canada is not the best country in the world in which to live.
The government has shamed Canadians by ignoring UN questions about our social problems for two years. When it finally had to submit a report, the government simply refused to answer some of the strongest concerns.
Yet the government sits on $10 billion in overtaxation for the first six months of this fiscal year alone. Why does the government continue to overtax and cut services to the most disadvantaged in our society?