Mr. Speaker, the government has just proven my point.
As the Mike Harris hatchetman on social services, the President of the Treasury Board spent a lot of time designing meanspirited schemes to keep welfare from the poor in Ontario. One of his big ideas was that welfare should be denied, and get this, unless the poor took a literacy test. He said that literacy could empower people, improve lives, expand jobs and boost the whole economy. That was his view in 2001.
Was that just an excuse to block poor people from welfare, or will he now buy his own argument and restore $18 million in federal funding for literacy?