Finance committee  Yes. The existing programs, whether it be for housing, which we completely agree with, or for income support, whether through credit or whatever, are all great, because they're better than the current.... It's costing us significantly as a province and as a country to not do it.

Finance committee  One of the hard things about coming up with these numbers, and we can—we can calculate and give you these numbers—is that we have created a very complex social system; we've made it very complex. It's really quite simple. In Hamilton, to give you an example, we have 100,000 people living in poverty: 25,000 are kids; 25,000 are people who are actually working but who aren't paid enough; another 15,000 just happen to have a disability.

Finance committee  We agree. If we look at the tools in the toolkit today and try to apply and use things there for simplicity of application immediately, it's still a very complex system. We know that with all of the costs of poverty.... Poverty is not “sexy” in terms of its cost, but it's a pandemic.

Finance committee  From a pure business perspective—and I start sounding less the capitalist, which I am, and more the socialist—the difficulty is explaining it. The most important determinant of health is not genetic, not lifestyle, but income. If you want to reduce health care costs significantly in the country, give people income, and they'll solve the problem themselves.

Finance committee  Thank you. I'm Mark Chamberlain. Thank you for this opportunity. You have, hopefully, in front of you a full brief that was provided along with an additional document called The Poverty Profile; it's bulletin one. I'm going to refer to it a little during the presentation. It shows graphically that we are at a pivotal point in Canada.