Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We are fairly in agreement over the four issues that have been raised. In terms of time, two major issues are going to be keeping us busy: employability and poverty. Experience over the past three years has shown us that when we bite off more than we can chew, we do not accomplish much. Employability is an example. If we go over our list, there are also other issues that we have not really completed. I would limit myself to those four issues.
Mr. Lake touched on the topic of persons with disabilities. These are people with whom I have close ties. These are people who often suffer from isolation and poverty. We should therefore focus our work more on the issue of poverty.
When we dealt with the issue of employability, I found that, at first, we had targeted what we wanted to do quite well, but as we progressed, we went off in every direction, and now we are having trouble getting our act together to do something substantial that could be of use to the House.
Let me remind you that meeting the Minister is fine; we can prepare for this, but we are going to have to plan a meeting to do so. We are going to need one more meeting for Bill C-265. So that is not what is going to take up the most time; it is the other two issues. As for employability, I do not think that we can deal with that subject in a single meeting. It is going to take many meetings, because there is still a lot of work to do on this subject.
We all share the same concerns about poverty. I am repeating myself here, but I think that we have to be properly prepared in order not to repeat what has already been done by others. For instance, what is poverty? People who are better qualified than we are have already defined it for us. We can measure poverty. Poverty can be observed. People in politics at our level have two concerns. The first is to be able to arm ourselves with everything that has been done on the subject and identify what can be of use to us. That gives us insight. Then we will have a true picture of poverty. Afterwards, we will have to obtain expert advice on specific clienteles, for example, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities, elderly persons, particularly older women who are alone.
I therefore think that we will have to perform those duties first. Once we have gotten to work on finding ways to combat poverty, which is part of our mandate, we will be better equipped to do so.
I would like to point out immediately that our concern in our work will be to develop recommendations for the House. It is not by chance that poverty exists. There are aggravating factors for poverty and, especially, policy constraints that prevent us from getting people out of poverty. We have to identify them. I think that we can identify them together. We will quickly find ways. We just need to ask ourselves if our mutual political parties have the real political will to take measures to combat poverty. That is where the question lies.
I was happy to hear the Liberal Party leader say, last week, that he would have a plan to combat poverty. However, it is not enough to announce it. There has to be some substance to it. If we can contribute to the Liberal Party's plan, the Conservative Party's plan or our own, so much the better. We will vote that way at the same time.
The big issue, I think, once we will have covered employability, is poverty. As Mr. Lake intimated, we should try to find a slot for persons with disabilities, unless I have misunderstood our colleague Tony, who has been concerned with this for a long time. I think that we can link up with his concern through the poverty issue. For the moment, Mr. Chairman, I believe that we should limit ourselves to these four issues.