Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am disappointed in the direction the debate is going and in the way Reform members are diverting the debate. Liberals are jumping on the bandwagon and saying: “We are the best in the world; we are beautiful, good and nice”.
My colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean tried to start a non partisan debate on a world issue that is very real and is simply redefined in our motion.
The Reform member started his speech by saying: “We do not know exactly what Bloc members want”. We can therefore deduce that he does not agree with what we want, but he does not know what we want. If we listen to his speech, we realize it is rather inconsistent.
Secondly, I will explain to him what we want and I will ask him if he agrees. The motion is relatively simple: That this House reiterate the 1989 commitment to eliminating child poverty by the year 2000 and urge the government to act by quickly striking an all-party Special Parliamentary Committee that will consider the matter.
The Liberals had made this commitment in their first red book and have said they were in favour of it. What we want is to eliminate poverty. We want to strike a parliamentary committee to study this matter. I ask my Reform colleague if he agrees with this.