Madam Speaker, it is a delight to see you in the chair. I know you will do a wonderful job for the House.
My colleague and I have not had a chance to chat yet, but I am the critic for human resources for the Liberal Party and I know he is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. I am sure we will get to know each other on committee.
I hope the first order of business that our committee will undertake will be a continuation of a study that we left off with when the last Parliament ended, which is a study of poverty in Canada. The government, as I am sure most people know, has an appalling record when it comes to dealing with poverty in Canada.
He talks about the universal child care benefit. Every serious poverty organization and advocacy group in Canada have said to turn that into a child tax benefit. The Association of Food Banks last week indicated that they had never had so many working people visiting food banks.
Will the government get serious? Will we have a poverty reduction strategy such as England, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Australia and like Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and even Nova Scotia? When is the government going to get serious about reducing poverty in our country?