Thank you very much.
Certainly so far this morning we've had the kind of discussion that is actually frustrating for a lot of people out there who want some action now to help them in their circumstances. I was in Calgary a week and a half ago. They now have between 3,500 and 4,000 people who are homeless in one of the richest cities. The economy is booming there, and I had over 100 people in a room wanting me to do something, to bring a message back here, to get some kind of strategy on the road.
They're tired of hearing which poverty level is going to picked. They're saying we should just pick one, any one, because that will be better than what's there now. Take the one that Mr. Sarlo suggested; it would increase the welfare rates in Ontario by almost 50%. We should just pick a level and do it, because that would be better.
The challenge is that somehow out there we have begun this conversation about poverty that circles around the deserving and the undeserving, around rights and responsibilities. How do we get back to a conversation about human dignity, about the right of every Canadian citizen to a dignified life and all that entails?
When people get together--for instance, the MISWAA group, or the study that happened in Ontario in the eighties with the Thomson report, the social assistance review--they come to the realization that we have to do something, and that we can. We have the resources. But when we put the plan forward, the political will isn't there to push it further.
That seems to be where we are at the moment. We're okay with talking about a labour market strategy to deal with that. We're okay with talking about post-secondary education. And I agree that's part of it, but we're not okay when we begin to talk about actually even using the word “poverty” and the right of every citizen in Canada and their children to a life that's dignified.
What happened? In the seventies and the eighties we used to talk about that. I use the example sometimes that if you walked into a room to talk about poverty and started to blame the victim, you'd be thrown out of the room. Now it's the first thing that happens, almost, when you go into the room.
I guess I'm just asking what happened here. What can we do to turn that around?