Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for her speech in response to the throne speech which had wonderful words and great rhetoric. However, there is a big gap between the words we have just heard and the actual action of the government. Let me point to a couple of examples.
Not too long ago we all received information that Canada's positioning in terms of the human resource index which measures our treatment of people in the country dropped from first to fourth place. On top of it all we learned that Canada is now placed 12th among 17 countries pertaining to poverty. In terms of wealthy countries, measuring our responsiveness to children and others living in poverty, Canada rated number 12.
If we put that into the context of the government's handling of the budget and its failure, either deliberately or inadvertently, to lowball the surplus so that the money is not transferred to meeting the needs of children in poverty, we have a pretty deplorable situation on our hands. In fact, Mr. Speaker, you will know that over the last 10 years the government has lowballed the surplus to the tune of about $80 billion. That is money that could have gone to meeting the needs of children in poverty, to students, to cities, to environmentalists and so on.
I would like to ask the member, is she prepared now to put her mouth where the money is and ensure that those surplus dollars are accurately forecasted to begin with and will go to meeting human needs?