Thank you, Mr. Chair. We talk about strong, self-reliant people all the time. I’m sometimes afraid that people have too much of a dependency on the government to do this. I mean, I will support the recommendation that this motion is making, but I also want to make the point that we do sometimes — not really knowing it — contribute to people being too dependent on the government.
Home ownership is another good example. We say they’re capable of maintaining their own homes, but then we look after the maintenance or we provide money for improvements to the home. That, in my opinion, was not the reason for giving them the home in the first place. I think there are a lot of people out there who deserve homes. Actually, I’m straying from the motion, so I can speak to my other point when we get back to the page number.
I have to make a couple of quick comments to this. I’ll support the recommendation that we reinstate the Elders on the Land program, but I also wanted to make the point that we have let people become too dependent on the government to do everything from birth to death. We talk about self-reliant individuals all the time, and I don’t think we’re contributing to that. We have many classic examples within the government, within the budget, that take away a lot of that self-reliance. It’s something that I think we have to stand back and have a look at. I think we have to address that, because if we keep going at the rate we’re going.… Again, I’m straying from the motion, so I’ll leave it at that, Mr. Chair, and I’ll make my other comments when we get back to page 2-160. Thank you.