Mr. Speaker, I can try to clarify but I sure will not make excuses for the Liberals. What is so astounding about this is that they do know better. They know that when a federal government eliminates its commitments to social housing it is bound to increase the number of homeless people and the number of people living in substandard housing.
The Liberals do understand that if they provide no leadership on child care they will have more and more families at risk and more and more children who do not have the benefit of affordable quality child care.
What makes this so pathetic is when one of those members stands up, as he just did, and says “Why are you not congratulating us for our head start program?” I have worked with the head start movement for 33 years. What the government knows is that the vast majority of Canadian children are being robbed of getting the kind of head start in life they need because the government has completely abandoned its commitments to universal affordable child care.