Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite will have a chance to have a go at this as well.
The hon. member can criticize me all he wishes for making these points, but we have quite a number of women today, single mothers and others, who are living in poverty. Single mothers in particular have more difficulty getting jobs, and the jobs they do get are very often low paying. We hear that every day as our committee travels to various provinces. The lack of adequate low-cost day care services for instance is a real problem for some single mothers because it hinders their ability to seek and get employment.
Fully 92% of single mothers in Canada under the age of 25 live below the poverty line. That is a damning statistic. Getting single mothers out of poverty through education is very difficult. It is increasingly difficult as a result of provinces cutting off social assistance to single parents enrolled in post-secondary education. Every day we hear from single mothers who want to get out of the situations they are in but find it very difficult because the provinces have a tendency to cut off social assistance payments to a single mom who wants to get involved in post-secondary education. We perpetuate the problem by doing that instead of doing all we can to try to get these people off the welfare rolls, into a post-secondary education system and back—