Thank you.
I want to start by saying a big thank you to all of our witnesses. There's no shortage of wisdom around the table. It's very much appreciated. The fact that it's coming later in the process than it should have is the fault of folks around this table and not the fault of our witnesses.
I take the point about the correlation between employment levels and food bank use as well as social determinants of health. Some of our witnesses earlier talked about the various income support programs that exist right now in Canada, whether it's the Canada workers benefit, the guaranteed income supplement, the Canada child benefit or, potentially, the Canada disability benefit, although I think the government seems to be taking a very long time and hasn't really announced any of the details.
If we get an adequate Canada disability benefit now, we're going to cover a lot of pockets of a demographic that requires different kinds of financial assistance, but we're doing it in a lot of disparate ways with different outcomes. It seems to me that a guaranteed livable basic income would be a more efficient way of delivering the kind of income support we need to have. Of course, we'd like to see people employed, but we know that people living with disabilities can't always get the kind of employment they want or that will sustain their families. We know that, for many seniors, employment isn't an option, or certainly not full employment. It can be difficult to get work post-retirement.
I wonder if folks from the food bank, Ms. Nicholls and Mr. Hetherington, want to comment a little bit on how Canada should treat the question of income support in order to ensure that folks do have enough income to be able to afford the necessities of life, whether that means food or housing.