We're already seeing in this meeting, as we talk through some things, that we're definitely going to have some challenges in terms of maintaining our focus. As we go forward up to Christmas time, it seems to me that all we're really going to have time for is having the minister come before us and finishing this employability study.
In terms of the poverty study, it's interesting. We all have agreement that we want to do a poverty study, and we all take the issue very, very seriously. It's probably pretty clear that we're going to have some disagreements in terms of how we might think best to tackle this important issue.
To say that we're not going to have anything to do with defining what the issue is or talking about measurements of poverty or anything like that is the wrong way to go about it. I think you need to be somewhat systematic in this. We need to define the problem before we decide how we're going to solve it.
In terms of the motion we're talking about here, for a subcommittee, first, on the status of persons with disabilities, I'm a little bit unclear as I read the motion I have in front of me. In terms of the way the motion is worded, it's almost as if this subcommittee already exists, and then it doesn't actually assign any purpose to this subcommittee.
Again, in the interest of staying focused, I'm not sure that it makes sense to cut off part of us within the group to send off on a parallel study when we're already probably one of the busiest committees on the Hill, and of course many of us have more than one committee.
For example, I wouldn't want to not be a part of this disability subcommittee, given my own personal family circumstances, but I can't see how I could possibly do all the things that I am tasked with doing and contribute to finishing the employability study, and then finishing working properly on a poverty study, while at the same time having another role on a subcommittee with an issue as important as this one.
Again, I would say that there are a lot of wonderful, wonderful things we can do as a committee, especially in this committee, but we're going to have to pick some priorities and focus on those priorities.
As was mentioned by a couple of people, when we're dealing with people with disabilities, a large number of the issues that impact people and families dealing with disabilities for sure came into play during the employability study and will be reflected in that report, and absolutely will also be reflected in terms of the poverty study. If we're going to do a disability report of some sort, I think that would be an important study to do at some point, but it would be better done as a full committee, following the two studies we have on our plate right now.