Mr. Speaker, one thing that is for sure is that leaving things as they are is not going to solve the problem.
The House of Commons must take control of this issue, conduct a systematic and thorough investigation about what has happened and propose some solutions. We are certainly not getting solutions from the government. Promises, yes, I will grant that; we have had a list of promises as long as my arm from the government, only then to see those promises broken time after time. Sometimes it was over a period of years, even decades, as in the case of child care.
Our approach on this committee will be to get to the bottom of the fiscal imbalance that exists, which has been created as a result of the policies of the government. We will dig down and find out exactly what is required at the provincial and municipal levels. Then we will construct recommendations about how the House of Commons and ultimately the Government of Canada can take the sort of initiatives that will solve the problem.
We do not share the view that there should simply be a transfer of absolutely massive amounts of sums from the federal government without any requirements whatsoever so we are left with virtually nothing to do at the level of a nation such as we have here in Canada.
We believe it is important to have some objectives for our country. These would be objectives like being the leader of the pack when it comes to the environment and pollution control. These would be objectives like having a larger percentage of our citizens adequately and properly housed than is found in other countries. There should be an objective to get us in the front of the pack when it comes to early childhood development. The OECD has told us that we are way at the back of the pack. There should be an objective for us to be at the forefront on issues like Kyoto, instead of at the back of the pack, again as identified in the OECD report.
We want a status where we have the best quality of life as the Prime Minister once upon a time used to crow about. We have lost that under the custodianship of this particular administration and its predecessors.
We want to get to the bottom of how we can get back into the game and make Canada work again. That is the objective of the efforts of this committee. It will involve taking a look not only at what the provinces are facing and what they require but also those of the municipalities.
I hope the member will now understand that doing nothing would not be a solution.