Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic to hear the numbers being floated. On the record I would have to say that I think they are absurd in terms of what it is costing us.
I would like to give members an example. A senior in my community who grew up in the Depression asked me if I knew what it was like in the Depression when the kids were hungry and the government said there was not a cent for them. The government had no money for them.
When they went through the Depression, he said, there was no unemployment money and there was nothing for them, but when the war came, boy oh boy, cost was not an option. We got the boots on them and we sent them off. We sent them over by the thousands. Cost was no option. The government did not consider it. Most of them never came home and the ones who did have had to deal with a parsimonious response from government year after year.
In my own riding, there is a widow who was given a pension of $3.25 a month. There is no problem with feeding us at lunch every day in the House. What everyone in this House gets fed at lunch is worth more than the $3.25 a month we were giving that widow, and this is in 2006.
I would like to ask the member why she thinks it is that the Conservative government stands here and comes up with such outrageously inflated figures when we are dealing with the simple fact of coming up with an honourable conclusion for what our veterans and their widows have lived through.