Mr. Speaker, in 1993, the Canadian government designated November 20 as national child day, to commemorate two major events in the history of the United Nations, namely the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1958, and of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989.
On this day, my thoughts are with the children who suffer from hardship, violence and hunger. We do not have the right to betray these fragile human beings, nor do we have the right to betray their distressed parents, who can no longer meet their most basic needs.
Yet, this government continues to turn its back on poverty by contributing, through its political choices, to increasing the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. Instead of indexing its tax system, this government prefers to underhandedly take money from the poor.
Let us hope that this child day will arouse the conscience of a government more concerned about its visibility than about putting children and their parents—