Mr. Speaker, I will try to be very brief. I rise on a very solemn and serious matter. As you know I wrote you a letter to seek leave to have an emergency debate under Standing Order 52(2).
Today is the 10th anniversary of the unanimous resolution that was passed in the House of Commons to seek to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Maybe the Speaker himself was present in the House that day. It was an honourable resolution that was made 10 years ago. Regrettably, today we are in a situation where not only have we not made any progress in this regard, a goal that was put together by all members of the House, but the situation has become much worse, to the extent that there are now 1.4 million children living in poverty.
We must not forget that those children are not alone. They are attached to families. Tens of thousands of families are living in poverty in this country.
For the 1.4 million children living in poverty this is definitely an emergency. For the 90% of single mothers of young children, it is an emergency. For the 300,000 children who make use of food banks, it is definitely an emergency.
Over the past two days, citizens right across the country have been holding vigils and meetings to address the emergency. Today, as the leader of the NDP pointed out, bells were ringing across the country at noon to draw to the attention of all members of the House the fact that the resolution has not met its goal.
I believe that members of parliament need an opportunity to report on the scale of the problem in our own communities, to question the government on why this emergency now exists and to set out some recommendations about what actions need to be taken to help poor kids in the country.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge that you grant the emergency debate because this did come from parliament and from all of us working together. Here we are 10 years later in a very sorry state of affairs. I think this is something that really necessitates an emergency debate. I would ask you to consider that.