On that point, the National Council of Welfare is absolutely amazing in terms of providing and publishing authoritative, reliable, and recent information about social assistance adequacy. What it says is that the state of social assistance in Canada, in terms of adequacy, is outrageous. And the single most important thing the federal government could do would be to say, when we give you money, we want adequacy along the lines that we've agreed to in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
On November 23rd, 2006. See this statement in context.