The market basket measure was first developed in the late 1990s, in part having to do with a certain amount of frustration with the other existing measures. For example, the low-income cut-off, which is often called LICO, had very coarse regional divisions. For example, a city such as Quebec City, which had a population at that time of over 400,000, was lumped in with Toronto. Those measures also weren't meaningful in the sense that they were mathematical constructs that weren't very transparent and didn't speak in a meaningful way to Canadians.
At that time, what was then called HRSD was tasked to make a more meaningful basket, working with provincial and territorial social ministries to set the basket. Now, the number of regions is up to 50. We should note that only just recently has there been a push to the north, so it is ironic that the communities most in need are sort of out of scope for this StatsCan survey.
The ethic in this bill I think is one of continual data improvement. With 50 communities, each with their own poverty line, we cover rural and urban differences as best we can.