Mr. Speaker, when I commenced my comments before question period, I talked about what I consider to be the seriousness of this issue. I talked about the statistics that were released by Statistics Canada last week. I talked about the consequences to this country, our society, the economy and the people who live here if this trend is allowed to continue. I talked about the need to come forward with a national, comprehensive poverty strategy in conjunction with the 10 provinces and 3 territories.
I have listened to the debate here today. Some of the comments do disturb me somewhat when we talk about hard-working Canadians. I want to remind members in the House that many of the people who are in poverty or in the low income cut-off range are hard-working Canadians.
I talked about what I have seen from the government over the last two years and four months, with program cuts that have been right across the board. I talked about the gutting of the early childhood programs that did exist, the cutting of some of the supports that are so needed for low income Canadians, such as public transit, affordable housing, and the cutbacks to the literacy programs.
I also mentioned what I consider to be the destruction of the fiscal framework and the inability of the government to respond to situations that come up on a day to day basis. We have one before us today: the situation in Burma. It is a crisis. I believe there are 22,000 people deceased. It is expected that another 25,000 are missing, presumed to be deceased or badly injured. I believe the announcement by the government was a support package of $2 million.