The LICO is historically rooted, but basically they estimated how much families spend on necessities: food, shelter, clothing. They calculated that and then said, let's have a line. If a family, by their income level, spends more than a certain percentage of their income on these necessities, we'll call them poor. That's how they find that line. It's partly relative because that package they decided on back in the 1960s was an arbitrary decision the same as these other sorts of measurements that measure what is actually spent and what is poor in an absolute sense--it's always there.
In terms of measures, we need them, and again, I would emphasize that any of these measures are useful for measuring progress or movement in poverty over time. Whether you use the LICO, the LIM, the Sarlo measure, or the market basket, they are all useful. You put them all together and you can get a good idea of what you want to do and what you're measuring.
In terms of the government's role, I'm all over the map. What I mean by that is that I believe in strong government action when government action can be effective. I think the role of government--and I can talk to people from the furthest right to the furthest left in Canada, and they can agree on this--is that we identify what works best and then put our resources there. It requires one thing: identifying what works best.
I'd say there actually is more research than people have suggested up here. It's an ongoing process profiting from our improved data over the years, and that should continue to put resources into identifying what works, what doesn't. That's basically a research question. That's being undertaken by your department, in fact.
Secondly, identify what works best and put the resources there. I don't think Canadians want money thrown down a well, but I think most Canadians will support measures that are effective in terms of spending money to help individuals, even if those programs are expensive, because if you can bring one of these long-term people out of poverty into the economic mainstream and you fix that person's problem for their lifetime, you remove that person from the government rolls.