I'll come back to the argument I was making in my short presentation. While I think local poverty reduction initiatives that are sparking across the country are critical to address the specificities of different communities—and I think poverty does look very different in different communities—it's critical to have a foundation. The federal government has a very important role in creating an equitable income security foundation for Canadians across the country, regardless of where they live. It has wholly and adequately a principal role in creating income security programs targeting different populations to provide adequate and equitable levels of support. I think it also has an important role to play in, obviously, social transfers to direct services at the local and municipal levels. I think as well it has an important role to play in the immigration system, and it has an important role to play in housing.
The federal government has moved back from housing, and I don't think it's an accident or a mistake that when we started to see poverty rising in the 1990s and income inequality emerging, it was at the same time that we saw a significant reduction in federal and provincial moneys in social housing and housing programs, just at the time when private market housing was taking off. Affordable housing remains a critical problem in Canada, and certainly in our large urban areas it is significantly a factor contributing to persistently high levels of poverty.
Interestingly, and I leave this as well as another area to consider, colleagues of mine in Calgary pointed out that they're doing a study of looking at.... There are different types of poverty. In England, for instance, they measure poverty rates based on housing poverty. They also talk about fuel poverty. In many United States communities and in Calgary, they're starting to look at transportation poverty, where people actually can no longer afford to live in areas adjacent to places of employment and are spending upwards of 30% of their income on transportation in order to get to employment. This is an emerging phenomenon that has everything to do with the pattern of suburbanization and economic development at this point in time.
So I think the idea that we are now seeing the emergence, certainly among the working poor, of transportation poor, is important and it speaks to what the role is of the federal government in investing in public transportation infrastructure that facilitates more equitable communities. I think it's important that we think about that. I think the federal government certainly would have a role to play in that regard as well.