Procedure and House Affairs committee  May I answer?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all, I would say that I'm actually speaking from my heart and my head. Second of all, I want you to note that there was a federal report from the 2008 election reporting that 500,000 people indicated that they did not vote because of lack of identification as a barrier.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, of course, but just because you saw a businessman.... I work with homeless people and poor people, and I know that they use vouch voting. I know that they use vouch voting—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, or in low-cost housing.... It's very difficult for low-income people who are in those circumstances to go and ask for an attestation. There's a humiliation involved in that. There is often a lack of desire to speak to your landlord to receive an attestation, or to speak to the supervisor of a mission, etc.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I think when you're talking about attestations, you're talking about when someone's in a shelter, or they are using a food service of some sort, a food bank, and then they go to an authority within that and seek an attestation.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure, just very briefly, I actually did a historical search within my own organization, which has a 43-year history in this country, to see if we had weighed in on the reforms that were happening in 2007. We didn't and I was wondering why. Of course, we were being defunded, in fact, at that time.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thanks for the question. Let's be clear; I'm the executive director of an anti-poverty organization. I am not someone who spends her time looking at how to build good electoral systems. That being said, I think it's kind of obvious. If you're trying to protect the dignity interests of people and you think about their circumstances—people are combatting pretty adverse circumstances who might otherwise avail themselves of vouch voting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this evening. I find it somewhat ironic that just over 50 years ago aboriginal peoples were granted the right to vote in Canada, and here we are just a short while later struggling to defend their rights. This has been a huge reminder of how fragile democracy is and how vigilant we have to be to protect it.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. We have a persistent and stubborn poverty problem in this country. It has been going on for more than a decade. We know that there are up to 4.5 million people in this country—that's all the people in the Maritimes, times two—who are poor. We know that every month in this country 900,000 people use food banks to make ends meet.

Finance committee  I'm Leilani Farha, the executive director of Canada Without Poverty. I was originally one of the panellists, but they said there wasn't room at the table. Here I am. I have an example, to answer Ms. Nash's question, about another country that has an anti-poverty plan in place with measurable timelines and goals, a plan that has actually been successful.