Indeed, Mr. Chair, you are getting ahead of me.
I was going to say that the series of amendments I am proposing are intended to correct the deficiency that has been identified by witnesses. This gap affects the measurement tool used to establish the official poverty line.
In the bill, we propose the market basket metric. This question was the subject of extensive discussions and debates, and opinions were divided.
If my amendments are adopted, there will be others, all of which are aimed at correcting this deficiency.
My first proposal is to slightly modify the notion of “poverty line”, which would be called the “official poverty reference line”. My goal here is to strike a balance between the government's proposal that the poverty line be based on the market basket metric, and what some witnesses have proposed, which is to abandon that metric outright and find another one.
A formal poverty reference line would be a better representation of how the poverty line should be understood. In light of this change, the definition and all consequential provisions would then have to be amended. This baseline would allow the poverty rate to be measured, and progress towards the targets to be assessed.
Although minor, this change would improve many things, according to the IRIS research institute, located in Quebec.