Sure.
I think the role of organizations like ours is to raise these issues of poverty and all of the complex interrelated issues and put them on the public's radar screen, so that it becomes a priority for the community and the community says clearly to all levels of government that this needs to be reinstated as a priority. I think that's a role that the community and organizations like ours can play.
We would hope to see leadership at all levels of government, but we know that elected officials do sometimes need to be led by their constituents. We really see that as our role, to educate and inform the public about the depth and the breadth and the root causes of poverty in our community, and potential solutions, and then ask them to voice that to their elected officials--to raise it up and get it on the radar screen.
We know that here in Calgary poverty issues really aren't on the public radar screen right now, so to some extent we can't expect it to be on the radar screen of our governments either. We need the public to speak out.