Mr. Speaker, I am humbled to rise for the first time in this new House. I truly appreciated the speech and comments from the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, as I appreciate her participation in meetings of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
She spoke at length about child poverty. I would like to talk about poverty among women, which is connected to child poverty.
I want to outline a couple of important statistics.
We know that two million people in Canada are living in divorced or separated families. We also know there are over a billion dollars arrears for income support payments after the result of divorce or separation. We know that 60% of that bucket is in enforcement proceedings. When we look at who is in enforcement, who is owing whom, 96% of the time it is a man who is owing money to a woman.
I want to ask the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot for her views on how a bill such as this, which has different aspects of government talking to one another and facilitates the payment of support will assist those women, particularly the women who are caring for children on their own, with respect to alleviating the poverty that she has mentioned, the poverty of women and children.