Mr. Speaker, I am happy the member asked the question. I do not think she knows what a big door she offered me to walk through. In fact, it was under a Conservative government that our government negotiated an agreement on the national child benefit.
I am sure she is aware that the Constitution tells us that social services, such as assistance to families with children, is the responsibility of the provinces. The only way the federal government can have any role in assisting families with children is through an agreement with the provincial governments.
It was a Conservative government, a Mike Harris government, and, may I say from the point of view of Ottawa West—Nepean, a Conservative government with John Baird as the minister of community and social services that would only allow us to help families with children if they were allowed to claw it back from families on public assistance.
How did things change when a Liberal government was elected in Toronto? One of the first things Premier Dalton McGuinty did was to say that Ontario could not afford to cancel the whole clawback right now but that it would not claw back the increase that the federal government was giving to those families. That certainly was a step in the right direction out of the pit that the Tories put us into when the national child benefit was brought in.
May I also say that the Conservatives, while they were stealing money out of the pockets of children and their parents, were also giving tax breaks to their rich friends.