Madam Speaker, I sponsored the motion this morning. I will disagree slightly with what my colleague just said. He said that he disagreed with the NDP member.
One thing is certain, she spoke from the heart. I believe she made the kind of speech we do not hear enough of here. She lives in an area where there may well be more poverty than elsewhere in Canada, and perhaps she cannot accept it because she sees it so closely. I feel that there is a serious problem in this House, and when she talks about it, she speaks from the heart, with great feeling. I think we should hear more speeches like that in the House.
We seem to be accepting the fact that to be a productive society we also have to have a certain level of poverty, that to be a productive society we have to let our children live in poverty, that we have to let child poverty grow and that there is nothing we can do about it. I remind the House that four years ago, there were 1 million children living in poverty and that today there are 1,5 million of them.
I do not believe there is nothing we can do about it. I was going to say that we buried our heads in sand. like ostriches; that is sometimes the impression I get.
In my opinion, speeches like this one are taken far too lightly. I cannot be unmoved. Yes, we have some differences of opinions on national standards and our views might be slightly different, but I cannot remain seated and claim that what she said did not make sense, because it made a lot of sense, I believe.