I come back to the question of priorities here. As a committee, we have to decide what our priority is. We took over two years to do the employability study. If we take the same amount of time to do the poverty study, we won't get it done.
We know from experience in this committee that we're going to have several pieces of legislation come before us. We're going to have several politically motivated issues that are going to be brought up from time to time that are going to require two meetings here or three meetings there, and if we continue to slot those in instead of dealing with the poverty study, then there is absolutely no substance to our committee's discussion about poverty; it's just talk.
If we're serious about doing a poverty study, if as a committee there's substance behind our talk on poverty, then we need to make an absolute priority of our poverty study. We need to not let anything get in the way of that poverty study. If anything, it will motivate us to get through the poverty study so that we can actually conduct hearings on the other things that we need to conduct hearings on.
In my view, the poverty study is first and foremost. It's the most important thing we have to study. What I don't want to see us do is to slot three meetings in here to study this issue, three other meetings in there to study another issue, and then fall four committee meetings short of finishing our poverty study at the end. That's the road I see us going down right now. If we don't start the poverty study now and stick to it, we will not finish it.
So I think we really need to question ourselves on whether that poverty study is our priority. I believe it should be.