Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate my colleague's presentation. I have enormous admiration for her, and I know how committed she is to the most vulnerable people in our society.
However, given that the federal government passed a law in 1991 to put an end to child poverty, yet last year we discovered that there were a million poor children in Canada, and there is even more child poverty today; given that the federal government benefited from the guaranteed income supplement by not giving it to seniors who needed that money, as she so rightly pointed out, and that it thereby saved $3.2 billion at the expense of vulnerable, needy seniors; given that the federal government achieved a surplus of over $4 billion with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation but did not reinvest this money in social housing by transferring the money to the provinces, as it was supposed to do; given that the federal government is unable to take care of the first nations as it should, let alone first nations seniors, women and children; given that the federal government is unable to take care of the soldiers and veterans for whom it is responsible, how does she think the federal government can take care of seniors when they do not even come within its jurisdiction, but are a provincial responsibility?