Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond directly to a couple of matters the parliamentary secretary spoke about.
The child poverty rate in this country is higher today than it was in 1989 when this Parliament resolved to eliminate child poverty in Canada. The child poverty rate at the time was 15%. Today it is 16%.
Maybe we need to have a debate on that alone, because the reality is denied by members opposite, not just by the parliamentary secretary--I do not want to pick on him--but by other members as well. The reality is that they deny the fact that we have a deepening of child poverty, that we have a racialization of child poverty in this country and that we have a feminization of child poverty. But however it is described, child poverty is at a higher rate today in the country than it was in 1989 when the Broadbent resolution was adopted unanimously by Parliament.
The government in power for the last 11 years has been the Liberal government, and the more it has implemented the Conservative policies of the Alliance, the more we have seen a deepening of that child poverty.
I want to speak briefly about the privatization that the parliamentary secretary applauds and lauds. He spoke about privatization in Great Britain. I have just received a report on the disastrous effect of privatization of the British railways. It is a disastrous report; they are in such trouble with that railway that they are trying to figure out how to re-nationalize it.
Then we have the airlines. In New Zealand airlines were privatized and deregulated. The airlines turned into a total disaster, looking a lot like Air Canada looks today, and what did the new Labour government in New Zealand do? What was it forced to do when it got back in power? It was forced to re-nationalize the airline because no other way of turning around the situation could be found.
So that member may know of a lot of privatization successes in terms of the corporations making big money: it is public money for private gain. That is what privatization is. When it comes to health care privatization, this government keeps speaking out of both sides of its mouth on that issue. I have to say that if this government thinks it is going to run an election on the contention that it is the champion of public and not for profit health in this country, I say bring on that election.