Madam Speaker, I understand the member's concerns and I will answer his question directly.
The member wants a parliamentary committee to assess how we can deal with the issue. In my experience as a parliamentarian, parliamentary committees do not often have the opportunity or the resources to do the job that is necessary. In fact I do not believe we require a royal commission on the family or children. I do not believe we need a parliamentary committee. I think we need to act.
Everyone in this place should understand that economics has a significant role to play in terms of eliminating child poverty. Restoring the fiscal health of the country will play an important role in improving our economy, expanding the economy, creating jobs, providing greater disposable income for Canadians and being able to deliver tax breaks to families so they have less stress in terms of their financial affairs. Those things will help.
Perhaps the member did not hear the part of my speech in which I talked about the breakdown of the Canadian family. Divorce and breakdown of common law relationships with children are causing a very significant problem in that although only 12% of families are single parent families they account for 46% of all children living in poverty. This is not an insignificant portion of the problem which the member seeks to address.
I suggest to the member that if it was simply a matter of giving money to poor people eventually we would get to the point where there would be a disincentive or no incentive to work or to contribute. In fact we would approach a level at which they would effectively have, with all of the benefits provided directly or indirectly by various levels of government, a guaranteed annual income.
A guaranteed annual income is a simple solution but it will not deal with the problems. That is why, when we deal with things such as how to help those in most need, increasing the child tax benefit by $850 million this year and another $850 million the next is a start. Is it enough? No, not at all.
It is a start. It represents and reflects the commitment of the government to restoring fiscal health to relieve Canadians over the longer term of the tax burden they are feeling and to ensuring that, most important, we invest in children who are our future and represent our best opportunity of investment for long term sustainable returns.