--and they were not present at the breakfast because no member of the Liberal caucus bothered to show up.
The poverty rate among aboriginal children is now 40%. The poverty rate among children with disabilities is now 30%.
Fifteen years ago, this Parliament voted to eliminate child poverty in this country by the year 2000. We now have growing child poverty. We have growing food lines. If the hon. member really wants to be connected to reality, he would be welcome to come to my community where over 1,000 people are maintained every week in a growing food bank situation. There are homeless in our area of the lower mainland. We have a B.C. Liberal government and homelessness has now tripled in our community.
I would be very pleased to inform the hon. member that he should remove a little of that disconnect between the parties and the pleasure here and what is really happening in main streets and communities across the country, because the reality is far different from what the hon. member believes. I think it would be an important wake-up call for him to understand what is really happening.
Another important point was the question of the bank profits and what is paid in terms of revenue. The actual figure for the years 2000 to 2003 should have been $12.1 billion. The actual figure of what was paid was $5.7 billion. I mentioned this in French so I will mention it again in English. It was part of the tax shelters where the banks did not have to pay income tax. According to a study done by Léo-Paul Lauzon at the University of Quebec in Montreal and released last week, 47% of what should have been paid in taxes actually was not.
That is the fundamental disconnect and problem that Canadians have on main streets right across this country. They see hospitals closing. They see a lack of child care. They see increasing homelessness. They see food banks that are growing. They see their personal and family debt loads growing, as I mentioned earlier, by one-third. They see their wages falling by 60¢ an hour. They see all of this and wonder why members of the Liberal government just do not get it. I think we have our answer; they do not get it because they do not understand.