Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Nickel Belt for the great work that he does with me in the great city of greater Sudbury.
We proposed six amendments and, as I do not have time to talk about all of them, I will talk about three.
The first amendment was to ensure that the financial literacy leader, whomever the Conservatives hire, needs to be bilingual. That amendment was turned down.
We asked that a definition of financial literacy be included in the bill. That was pretty straight forward but it amendment was turned down.
We then asked that an advisory council be brought forward by looking at the recommendations of the task force. The second recommendation of the task force was that the financial literacy leader needed an advisory council. It recommended that the advisory council be made up of financial organizations, members from the industry, labour, education and other community stakeholders. All of these groups would then advise the financial literacy leader and ensure that the great work that is currently being done by all of the not for profits and other organizations that are already doing this work across the country would be able to work together with this financial literacy coordinator. The word “coordinator” was used several times in committee. The witnesses never used the word “leader”, but said that they needed someone to coordinate all of this. We presented this amendment and it also was turned down.
Obviously, the Conservatives had no interest in trying to make this a bill that works for everyone.