Mr. Speaker, the only thing left to do is to elect an NDP government, when we look at what the finance minister of the Conservative government has done to us, and when we look at what the Liberal minister of finance did to us when he took away the employment insurance from the people of the Atlantic region.
The government now has a $54 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund. We are used to getting hit right between the eyes, but we are sick and tired of it. We are sick and tired of being told, “Here is some hope, but we will take it away from you”, and, “If you do not have a job, just jump on the train or take the first flight leaving Moncton, Halifax or St. John's, go to Alberta or Fort McMurray and you will have a job, and if you do not, it is just because you are lazy and do not want to work”.
That is what we were being told by Liberal ministers. One Liberal human resources minister said the people from Atlantic Canada were just lazy and did not want to work and that is why they were cutting employment insurance.
The Liberal government signed the Atlantic accord when it got pushed into it, and now here is another minister coming up and saying it will be taken away from us.
We are so used to being given things and having them taken away before we get them. We are getting sick of it because it hurts families. I get calls in my office from women who say they have no food to give to their children. We are not in Ottawa, I can tell members that. Even in Ottawa, a beautiful city that we have here, we see people on the street begging for food. It is not the type of country that we should have.
When we have 1.4 million children who are hungry in our country, we should be ashamed of it. In 1989 we passed a motion that within 10 years, not one child would be hungry in our country. When we go to Toronto, in front of City Hall, we have people lying on cardboard to sleep. In a country like Canada, we should be ashamed of that.
I am not too proud sometimes of my country, particularly the way that we treat human beings and the way that we treat our children. I am not too pleased. I do not have much to say about what we have passed in the last 100 years. That is why I said to my dad, “Might as well vote for something other than the Conservatives and the Liberals because we served them on a silver plate and we are the poorest ones in the country”.
It is about time to maybe change the political party in Atlantic Canada.